A Dark and Distant Shore (110 page)

For the next two hours, the wardrobe was a scene of furious activity, no less urgent for the deferential silence that ruled. Off with the existing trimmings, said Monsieur in his Fenland French, and on with – no, not that. That, perhaps? No. This, possibly? Umm, no. What about this? Just possible; drape it more to the left, Miss Juliana. No; try the right. No. That white tulle, the one with the silver stitches. One layer over the skirt. Two layers. Three layers. From time to time, a lady-in-waiting’s voice would come up through the speaking tube from the dressing-room below. How was Monsieur Worth progressing? Monsieur waved to Miss Juliana to deal with it.

But at last it was done, and there was a new white-and-silver gown ready for the empress to wear, luxuriously quiet and unimpeachably tactful. Gloves, fan and shoes were entrusted to a lady-in-waiting, and the lay figure itself was set in an elevator that descended through the floor directly into the dressing-room below. Monsieur made his way downstairs by the more orthodox route to ensure that Her Imperial Majesty was correctly jewelled for the toilette.

Juliana and the seamstresses, on the way out, passed the covered courtyard where supper was to be served that night. It looked very inviting with its floor crowded with tables, trailing greenery round the Corinthian marble columns, the swagged frieze gleaming gold, the chandeliers glittering, and flowers massed in the great blue vases with their imperial ‘N’. There were garlands of little electric lights in the gardens, and Strauss himself was to conduct the orchestra. Juliana almost wished she had been invited.

Wishing for the moon! She shrugged, and hurried the girls back to the rue de la Paix. There was so much still to do, and scarcely time to swallow a mouthful of
pâté
and a glass of Madeira purloined from the salon before the great ladies began to arrive. Miss Mary and Miss Esther didn’t need Juliana’s files for the Princess von Metternich, scarlet-lipped, large-nosed, and looking, as she herself said, like a rather chic monkey; or the mischievous Comtesse de Pourtalès; or the impossible Princess Rimsky-Korsakov. But there were others, not dozens but scores, who were not quite such
habituées,
and about whom memories had to be refreshed. It was well into the small hours by the time Juliana was free to go home.

She thought at first that the pains were only colic, but then, exhausted and frightened, realized that they weren’t. She wasn’t ready, and nothing had been arranged. Loosening her vice-like grip on Arsène’s arm, she gasped, ‘Go for Madame Louis,
please
!
She will know what to do. She has had...’ The pain tore through her, but after a few moments, she was able to go on. ‘She has had five children. Go,
please.
’

Frantically, she tried to remember what had happened before, and everything Richard had said before little Luke was born. There was something...

When the concierge arrived, Juliana stammered, ‘There was something a Hungarian doctor discovered, something to do with... What was it?
What was it
?’

‘
Ce qu’il y a de certain, c’est qu’il n’y a pas de quoi fouetter un chat!
What should a Hungarian doctor know,
enfin
?
Calm yourself, madame!’

‘No, it was important. Something to do with the after-birth fever that women die from. What was it?
What was it
?’

She remembered, just before all power to think deserted her. ‘Chlorine water!’ she moaned. ‘Please, Madame Louis. Please wash your hands in chlorine water!’ And then it all began.

She had no idea how long it was before she became conscious of the sound of a small, reedy wail. Somewhere in the suffocatingly warm world outside her body, she could hear Madame Louis grumbling away to herself, in the way concierges always did, and then the words took shape.

‘My fourth came early, monsieur, you know. Keep him cosy, they told me, and I did, and look what a fine, strapping lad he’s turned out to be! You couldn’t wish for a finer, now could you, Monsieur Victor?
But I am a better shape for children than madame,
bien entendu,
so it’s all for the best. And you’ll like having a little girl, won’t you, monsieur?’

Juliana smiled, and then sighed, and drifted off into an empty, aching sleep.

Vilia was not altogether surprised when she heard in the summer of 1867 that Perry Randall was dead. Although she had thought him physically well-looking, she had noticed that by the end of the evening he had seemed unnaturally tired and drawn. What a very short marriage theirs would have been, she reflected with a faint smile, if by some aberration she had said yes.

The news didn’t even send her back to the past, remembering. She had been through all that, so often, in the five or six years after 1851, when she had never been quite herself. Now, all she did was shake her head as if it had been someone else who had been involved, someone else who had been blinded by his charm all those years ago and had remained, inexplicably, under his spell until at last, slowly and with great labour, she had freed herself from it. Now, all she felt was a faint, lingering scorn for that long-ago weakness. If he had been stronger, how different her life would have been. What a wasteful thing human love was! So much passion, so much anguish, and all to no purpose. Better, infinitely better, to lavish one’s ardour on earth and stone, lasting, predictable – responsive, even, in a comforting, unemotional way. Kinveil would still be here when she was dust.

She thought of all the others who were already dust, and for a moment had the curious sensation of having mislaid the greater part of her life. So many of the people who had touched it were gone. Andrew, and dear Mungo, and Luke. Drew, Magnus, and now Perry. And Charlotte Blair, and Harriet; and Edward, on a dark, sleeting day in February. Of all her contemporaries, there was no one left but Sorley, the first of them all. It was as if the two of them, now, had been transported back into childhood, when Kinveil was their world and belonged only to them. Was that, she wondered, why she had begun to see things again with the uncluttered vision of her early years, when problems were clearly defined and their solutions self-evident, and all that was needed to settle them was a little application? Or was it just a sign of age? She didn’t think so, because the oddest thing about growing old, she had found, was that she felt just the same inside as she had always done. It was as if, running through her veins and nerves, there was some kind of basic, unchanging essence of Vilia.

She laughed, mocking herself, and turned her face towards the sea.

When, in November 1867, Vilia yielded to Shona’s pleading and summoned the family to Kinveil for Christmas and the New Year, no one but Amy was pleased.

‘What?’ Lavinia exclaimed to Gideon. ‘Spend weeks on end in that freezing barracks of a place – because, take my word for it, the roads will be impassable by New Year and we’ll never get away again! No, thank you.
What
a pity I have so many commitments in London! Besides, William and Vilia don’t get on. She thinks he’s stuffy.’

Peregrine James didn’t even bother to manufacture an excuse, but his letter of regret was a model of its kind.

Otherwise, Gideon was interested to note, everyone had turned up, including the Barbers from Glenbraddan – Grace, Ian, Isa, the five girls, and four-year-old Jay, as well as Petronella, now in her mid-thirties, still a suffragist, and proving it by still being single. Theo had come up from Marchfield with Jermyn and Madge and the children, little Drusilla, Sophie, and two-year-old Neil. Jermyn said he and Madge both had work to do – he on his repeating field gun, and she on a play script – and they had thought they might as well work at Kinveil as anywhere else, while Theo announced plaintively that he needed a rest after steering Lauristons’ through yet another period of financial crisis and bank collapses. ‘Peregrine James says, and I agree with him, that the time has come to turn Lauristons’ into a limited liability company. Capital of about £155,000 in £100 shares, dear boy, and we haven’t settled the family holding yet. Problems, problems! I can’t imagine how I keep so calm.’

There was another guest, who was a surprise. Francis Randall. His father, it seemed, had left a few personal bequests. ‘Private mementoes,’ Francis said, ‘that he wished me to deliver in person. It is a very real pleasure for me to do so.’ He was thirty years old now, but he still had the same slightly deprecating charm that Gideon remembered in him as a boy, and the same dark good looks that were Perry’s, and yet not Perry’s. ‘I would like to say that I am honoured to have been invited here to spend this festive season with you. New Year is not generally celebrated in my country, and I look forward to it with the most intense interest.’

Vilia wasn’t used to the American style of conversation, and found his formality a trifle oppressive. ‘Quite so,’ she said. ‘Although I cannot see that being honoured enters into it. You are, after all, brother to Grace and Shona, and uncle to several of the children.’

‘
Pure
Beacon Hill!’ Amy muttered irrepressibly to her husband. ‘I could recognize the breed blindfold at a hundred paces.’ Aloud, she said, ‘Mr Randall, I believe our families must be acquainted.’

They were, but Vilia put an imperious stop to what showed signs of developing into an enjoyable gossip, by remarking, ‘I am sure that Grace and Shona are most anxious to have the mementoes of their father, Francis!’

Francis flushed slightly. His father, wilfully allowing life to slip from his grasp, had told him something of his own and Vilia Cameron’s history. ‘You are interested in people,’ he had said, ‘but I wonder if you’ll ever know how predictable and yet unpredictable they can be. Or how they can be shaped by circumstance, and accident, and other, perfectly ordinary people, so that...’ He hadn’t gone on. All he had said was, ‘I want you to meet her, and I want you to give her something from me. You can make that your excuse.’ Francis now found that it was going to take a real feat of imagination before he could see, in this intimidating dowager, what his father had seen in the girl of fifty years before.

There was a pretty Paul Revere rose bowl for Grace, and a sweetmeat basket for Shona; for Petronella, a miniature bust of Susan B. Anthony, and for Ian a copy of Tom Paine; for Jermyn, a perfect scale model of a fifteenth-century cannon. Francis said, ‘My father also wished me to give mementoes to you, Mistress Cameron, and to Theo and Gideon, for although there is no blood relationship, he remembers – remembered – your business association with the greatest kindness.’

Gideon wondered if perhaps there had been a trace of malice in Theo’s packet of shares in a Mid-West railroad company; certainly, there was a deliberate aptness where his own gift, a first edition of Ogilby’s
America,
was concerned, but he thought only a friendly irony had been intended. He had sent Perry a copy of the first edition of Lauriston’s
America,
years ago, and Perry had approved.

They had to ask – or, at least, Theo did – before they discovered what was in Vilia’s package, which she had been staring at for quite a long time, without speaking. ‘A pin. A scarf pin,’ she replied without any particular expression, and held it out for them to see. It wasn’t valuable, but it had great charm and the workmanship was fine. The head was made in the form of a small, coiled snake, handsomely wrought in gold, with fire opals for eyes. ‘How lovely!’ Amy exclaimed, and after a moment, Vilia said, ‘Yes. Most considerate of your father, Francis, but there was no need for him to remember me.’ Gideon could see that Theo had recognized the pin, as he did, but no one else showed anything but polite appreciation. Or – was there a trace of puzzlement in Shona’s eyes? It was an extremely
personal
gift, when one remembered Perry’s fondness for it.

Amy, conscious of undercurrents, was intrigued. She knew very little about Perry Randall; clearly, it behoved her to know more, though not right now, when she had quite enough to interest her. It was the first time she had been to Kinveil, and the first time she had met Vilia. The proposed visit at the end of ’65 had had to be cancelled, because Fanshawe – scantier of hair and more purple of nose, but otherwise unchanged – had summoned Gideon hastily back from Marchfield; ratification of the slavery amendment to the U.S. constitution was almost complete and Fanshawe wanted an authoritative article, complete with interviews. Then, in the summer of ’66, Amy had become pregnant, and the doctors had said that a first child at the age of thirty-five was not what they would have recommended. She was to indulge in no exertion at all, and certainly no long and difficult journeys. For the first two or three months, Steven had been a delicate baby, but had subsequently begun to develop at the most amazing rate, as if, Gideon remarked, having elected to remain in the world, he were determined to make the most of it.

Vilia, unlike most grandmothers, didn’t seem to be much enamoured of babies. ‘They’re so unrewarding,’ she said. ‘Especially when you consider how much effort you put into them. They have no rational conversation at all and, what’s worse, you know they
won’t
have any for twenty years at least!’

Amy laughed, bouncing the child on her lap. ‘Ah, but it’s worth waiting for, isn’t it? To have tall, handsome, clever sons?’

‘Is it? I suppose so, though I have always thought the popular attachment to the idea of close-knit families a little sickly. Gideon and Theo and I are on excellent terms, but when they aren’t here I don’t miss them in the least, and I’m very sure they don’t miss me.’

‘You shouldn’t have brought them up to be so independent.’

Her mother-in-law sighed austerely. ‘My dear Amy, I had very little choice. The foundry was more important. It was a choice between working to feed them – and neglecting them a little – or pampering them and starving.’ She studied the suitably crushed Amy for a moment, and then went on, ‘You should have an occupation. You’re intelligent enough, it seems, and I don’t believe in women frittering away their lives in domesticity.’