A Place Called Winter (4 page)

‘No, no,’ Harry insisted. ‘Let the matter rest.’ Such gifts were not made without forethought and planning. If she had made his father’s latter years happier, she had earned the roof over her head at least. Nice was, he felt sure, not a place he would ever visit again.

The thought of suddenly being responsible for so much property worried him, and he was relieved to hear that once he had signed a few bits of paper, he could leave everything exactly as it was and his now considerably larger income would continue to come in as before. It was brought home to him that, left nothing, Jack now depended directly on him for everything. His immediate instinct was simply to split the inheritance in two, but apparently this would not do. Because of fees, his holdings generated more income for them both if left intact.

‘Besides, you’re now in a position to marry,’ the solicitor reminded him, ‘and a wife and household will draw on your resources far more than your current circumstances do.’ The solicitor then actually produced an illustration of annual average household costs for a husband, wife, two children and staff of four. Harry had so little sense of what anything cost that he could not tell if the figures were supposed to make him wince or offer a pleasant surprise, so he looked at them blankly, which the lawyer evidently took for risky sangfroid. Apologising for his forwardness, and saying he was aware that Harry had no father or mother to advise him on such matters, he added that he assumed Harry naturally had little experience of such realities and warned him to be on his guard because he had now become what was vulgarly termed
a catch
.

Harry pondered this in the hours that followed, as he walked the length of Piccadilly and Knightsbridge to soothe his thoughts in a visit to the museums. The idea was so strange. It was not as though his actual worth were suddenly more visible; not even his own dear brother knew it. He knew there were guides to the peerage and the landed gentry; he had looked his mother’s family up in the latter in an idle hour in the club library. Perhaps financial information was published somewhere as well, in a husband-hunting equivalent to one of Jack’s beloved stud books, and even now some unscrupulous mother was poring over it and placing a little question mark beside his name with her ivory pencil?

He decided to be not secretive, exactly, but discreet with Jack. Jack was more in the world than he, and was naturally trusting and open, so would never suspect people’s motives or think to hold things back from them if he thought they liked him. He was one of Nature’s friends, not her privy counsellors, and had always found the keeping of secrets an intolerable burden.

Harry resolved that ushering Jack through his training and seeing him somehow settled would, in any case, be his first priority. The fending off, or not, of potential mothers-in-law could come later. Even had it not been so important for Jack to concentrate on his studies, the observance of full mourning gave Harry a convenient year in which to remain socially aloof and take stock.

Jack was athletic and good-looking and, without being a peacock, took a natural pride in his appearance and a keen interest in what he wore. He chafed at having to don mourning all year and itched, Harry was sure, to cut a dash again in his rowing club blazer or a suit other than his black one. Harry, by contrast, found he relished the excuse mourning gave for withdrawal. His life had hardly been a social whirl before, but for twelve months he was spared even having to make idle conversation. Strangers and acquaintance alike now treated him with a welcome reserve. It reminded him of the legend he had read as a boy of Perseus granted invisibility by a magic cap. Other boys in the class had bragged of the mischief it would let them work, the people they would spy on or banks they would raid, but he had dreamed only of the way it would let him be entirely alone, unpestered, unprovoked. Ironically, he found himself observing other people in mourning, now that he was one of them, and noting the slight differences in their approaches to the discipline of dressing like a crow.

Chapter Three

Months after black had become second nature, to the point where Harry could imagine wearing it for ever, like a handsome doorman’s uniform, and weeks after his brother had graduated as a vet and begun applying for positions, Jack burst in on Harry’s morning exercises excitedly waving a card. He was dressed like springtime itself in a gaudy blazer.

The card had been left by the mother of a girl he had met at a recent rowing gala. Jack’s eight won a cup, and he had fallen into conversation with the young woman when queuing up to enter the marquee to collect it.

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Well I don’t remember. Nothing probably. But she’s awfully nice. It was a hot day, so the marquee was like a furnace, and nobody much wanted to be in there. I think I said something stupid about Lady Whatever deserving a cup of her own for standing in there in full fig to make speeches and hand out little bits of silver. She’s got about ten sisters apparently. Miss Wells, that is, not Lady Thingummy. Oh don’t look like that, Harry. It’ll be fun. And our year ended last week so we don’t have to dress like undertakers.’

‘Can’t you go on your own?’

‘I’m shy.’

‘Piffle.’

‘Please, Harry. We never go anywhere and it’d be jolly. Besides, you’re the eldest, so you’re the one they’ll really want to meet. You’re my passport. And it’ll do you good, you know.’

So Harry agreed, because he could refuse Jack nothing and because he was slightly ashamed that he had not even noticed that they had emerged from their year of mourning. He kept to his usual routine, but did so in a summer suit and blue tie, whose pale colours made him feel conspicuous as he walked around Green Park and St James’s.

He lunched at his club earlier than usual so as to meet Jack in good time. Mrs Wells lived far out to the west, on the Thames near Twickenham, so they had to catch a train from Waterloo, which felt quite like an excursion, and a holiday mood stole over Harry. As Jack told him all he knew about the people they were visiting, it dawned on him that this brother who he’d always thought of himself as guarding might actually be feeling protective towards him. To Jack, he realised, he must seem a faintly pathetic figure, a sort of hermit.

Mrs Wells was a solicitor’s widow of independent means with three adult sons and a tribe of six daughters. The eldest two boys had followed their father into law, the next was a district commissioner in Africa. The daughter Jack had met was Georgina, the second girl.

‘And you intend me for the eldest, I suppose? The one with ginger hair and whiskers?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Jack told him, glancing out of the window at the blackened backs of houses they were passing. ‘I’m reliably informed she has no hair whatsoever.’

Arriving at the small station in Strawberry Hill felt like visiting the country. There were trees, birdsong, hardly any traffic. Consulting his Boot’s District Guide, Jack led them down from the platform, over a level crossing and past a sequence of decorative villas to Mrs Wells’s road, which had the preposterously pretty name of Strawberry Vale.

‘Didn’t Pope live near here?’ Harry asked as he glimpsed the river between trees.

‘Who?’

‘You remember. Poetry. School.’

Ma Touraine was a handsome house, older than the smaller ones that had sprung up to either side of it. It was set back from the road behind neatly clipped hedges. It had some small stables to one side, which Jack glanced into instinctively only to pronounce them unused. There was a giggle and Harry saw that three children were observing them from an open window on the second floor. He raised his hat, which provoked more giggling, then a woman’s distant rebuke, at which the three heads were withdrawn.

Somehow one expected the matriarch of such a gang to be tall and imperious, but Mrs Wells was tiny, a little under five feet tall. She was elegantly dressed in a dark violet silk that rustled as she rose from her tea table to offer them each her hand. She wore no widow’s weeds, but the striking silver streak in the chestnut hair piled up on her head like a little crown conferred a certain dignity, as did the keys and chatelaine dangling from her waist on a length of jet beads.

She introduced them to a visiting neighbour, who chatted to them about the warm weather and the delightful way the house’s gardens ran down to the river and a little landing stage, while Mrs Wells slipped across the hall to summon The Girls.

A muffled exchange from another room revealed a sterner note to Mrs Wells’s voice. The neighbour took her leave almost at once on their hostess’s return, as if on cue, saying, ‘Oh I only live two streets away and Estervana and I see each other all the time.’

Mrs Wells poured tea, offered little cakes and explained that her eldest daughters would join them shortly but that Winifred was shy.

‘So am I,’ Harry told her.

‘Oh,’ she said, startled by his candour. ‘That’s nice. So few men will admit to that. I fear my late husband was a terrible bully when he was at home, which left some of the children rather cowed. Me too!’ She laughed shortly. ‘Georgina was the only one who stood up to him, so of course she was his favourite. Winifred is more like me. Only artistic.’

There was a clattering on the staircase, as of a dropped toy, and much giggling.

‘Forgive me,’ Mrs Wells murmured and returned to the hall. Jack caught Harry’s eye and winked – one of the many tricks Harry had never mastered. ‘Madame Vance?’ Mrs Wells called up, just a hint of steel showing through her gentle tone. ‘Would you, er,
s’il vous plaît
?’

There was a quick handclap, a sharp French command and a thunder of little feet retreating back upstairs.

‘I’m sorry.’ Mrs Wells returned to her station. ‘My youngest three. Curious to lay eyes on visitors. With so many charges, Madame Vance cannot always keep control. We are thinking of sending the middle two away to Belgium to be finished by the nuns.’

‘Are you Roman Catholics?’

‘Heavens no, but the Sisters are so good at conferring a certain
je ne sais quoi
. And, well, I fear one of the troubles with growing up in so large a family can be that one gets lax from sheer exhaustion and the youngest ones are allowed to become . . .’

‘Unruly?’ Jack suggested with a smile.

‘Overconfident. Ah!
Te voici, Georgette
. You have already met Mr Jack Cane, of course. This is his older brother, Harry. And here, at last, is my Winifred.’

Like the principal and secondary couples in a comedy, Harry thought, they were two matching pairs, one blonde, one dark. Only, to his surprise, it was the dark one Jack had chosen for himself, the one who was handsome rather than pretty. But she shared his confidence and easy charm.

‘Sorry we took such an age,’ Georgina said, smiling. ‘I made Winnie change her dress twice, then she found a grass stain on mine, so then I had to change too. I’m sure you’ve both had more than enough of Mother’s tea by now. Why don’t you let us show you the garden?’

‘That’s a lovely idea,’ Mrs Wells said. ‘But if you go in one of the boats, dear, do let the gentlemen take the oars.’ She touched a little hand on Harry’s arm. ‘Her brothers encouraged George to be athletic and I fear it can sometimes make her a little headstrong.’

‘She means bossy,’ Winifred said quietly and dipped her head.

‘So you don’t row?’ Harry asked her as he stood aside to let her through the French windows before him as the other pair strode ahead.

‘Oh not remotely. I mean, I’ve tried, but I end by going in circles, which makes people laugh at me.’

He winced. ‘It’s horrible being laughed at,’ he said. ‘People say you should be a good sport and get used to it, but the laughter never seems friendly and one never gets used to it. Or I don’t.’

‘Don’t you row either?’ she asked.

‘I don’t really do anything much. I ride. I walk. I like walking.’

‘So do I.’

So they walked very slowly around the pretty waterside garden while Jack and George, with much laughter, took one of several rowing boats moored to the landing stage and struck out across the water towards a nearby reedy island. Strictly speaking, he supposed, they should all have stayed at least within listening distance, but the scented almost-rusticity of the setting seemed to dispense with the rigid protocol of a Mayfair drawing room. And in any case, Mrs Wells had followed them out on to the terrace, where she sat in the shade of a little blue awning that hung from the house’s rear, and made a show of tidying nearby roses with a pair of secateurs.

‘What a lovely spot,’ he said. ‘Have you always lived here?’

‘All my life,’ Winifred told him. ‘I think it suited Father to have us out of the way. My brother Barry – Barrington – calls it the Nunnery.’

‘Yet you don’t want to escape?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nuns. One always assumes they resent being locked up and want to escape.’

‘Really? I envy them the peace.’ She saw his questioning glance. ‘It’s not always so quiet here,’ she said. ‘The boys are all at work and the girls are being sat on by Madame Vance in the schoolroom. There are times when I think the privacy of a nun’s cell could be wonderful.’

‘Oh dear,’ he said, mock serious, and she smiled, if something so grave could be called smiling.

They reached a wrought-iron bench in the shifting golden shade of a weeping willow, which seemed like a destination, so they sat. Winifred watched George row Jack, which gave Harry the opportunity to watch her. She was, he decided, quite lovely, with fair hair piled upon her head in the kind of relaxed arrangement he was sure had taken a good hour to achieve, and china-blue eyes and a creamy complexion. She was extraordinarily solemn, sad even, yet with a suggestion of irony, of the kind of weary humour he liked best.

‘I’m afraid I’m not very good company,’ he said at last, because he had noticed Mrs Wells glancing anxiously their way.

‘No, no,’ Winifred protested, turning back to face him. ‘You’re . . . I’m a hopeless conversationalist. I’d always rather listen.’

‘Me too. Do you worry about your sister? On the water, I mean.’

‘George? No. Not really. She’s an excellent swimmer. When we were little, it amused Father to throw sticks for her to fetch, as though she were a dog.’

‘Your mother said she stood up to him.’

‘Oh yes. She’s quite fearless.’

‘Was he so fearful?’

‘Yes. When we heard his key in the lock, we would run upstairs.’

‘Like nuns.’

‘Quite. Only I’m not sure nuns are allowed to run. He made poor Mother so nervous she would get palpitations.’

‘Yet their marriage was a happy one.’

‘Not really. Just . . . fruitful. He only took her out once in all their years together.’

‘No!’

‘Truthfully. He liked her to repeat the story, as it made him laugh. Just once he took her into town for the evening in her best finery. They went to the theatre and then for lobster and champagne and then, when they came out on to the pavement, there was a tremendous glow in the sky to the west. I suppose it was a sunset but he pointed it out to her and said, “Look, my dear. That might be our cherubs burning in their beds!” And she was so horrified, she insisted he call a cab for her to go home at once while he went on to his club to meet his friends. It was by way of a lesson, I suppose, and he never took her out again and she never suggested he take her. She used to say he was her street angel – so charming and amusing to his friends and clients and a perfect tyrant in the home.’

‘How dreadful for you.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t so bad. We lived here, after all, in comfort. And he never beat us or shouted. He simply had a cruel tongue. Well, he beat my brothers sometimes.’

‘Why do you suppose he married, if it pleased him so little?’

‘But it did please him, I think; it magnified him. And he married for love. Mother was extremely pretty once. He wanted sons, of course, to take on the partnership one day, and he enjoyed having us all walk to church behind him. He liked the fact that we filled two pews.’

‘He was a patriarch.’

She nodded sadly. ‘That’s the word.’

‘Are any of your brothers like him?’

‘Bob,’ she said, without a moment’s hesitation, so that Harry immediately worried that Bob might be about to appear. She stood suddenly. ‘We should fetch George back,’ she said. ‘It’s quite sunny and she’s gone out without her hat and will be getting a labourer’s tan.’

Jack and George were enjoying themselves too much, however. Jack had resumed rowing duties and George was trailing a hand in the water. She said something that made Jack laugh so hard he had to stop rowing briefly. The two of them looked like an illustration for Modern Happiness, unguarded, relaxed, entirely themselves, in a way that made Harry feel he belonged to the old century. Perhaps it wasn’t beauty, ultimately, that won men to women or vice versa, but an ability to make one laugh? Harry made a gesture as of putting on a hat and pointed to George, but Jack wilfully misunderstood, making ever more complicated hand gestures back to make George laugh in turn.

‘Does he ever do as he’s told?’ Winifred asked, in a tone that made Harry wonder if she wouldn’t rather be in the little boat instead of her sister.

‘Not often,’ he admitted, and she gave one of her grave half-smiles.

‘It’s not easy being the eldest,’ she said.

‘George bears it pretty lightly.’

‘Don’t be gallant,’ she fired back. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

‘Sorry. Your mother said you were shy, but you don’t seem—’

‘I’m shy in groups. I’m hopeless in groups, and that’s what a family like ours tends to be. All the time.’

‘Well I’m shy even on my own. There are days when I hardly speak.’

‘How wonderful!’

‘It’s surprising how few words you need once you put your mind to it.’

‘Do you ever dream about invisibility?’ she asked him.

‘Often. To be left entirely alone!’

‘That’s it!’ She clapped. ‘Some people would immediately rob a jeweller’s or an art gallery if no one could see them, but I think I would simply stay quietly in my room with a novel.’

He was struck by how closely she had voiced his own instincts, and having established that each preferred silence, they walked wordlessly away from their happy siblings and around the rest of the garden, pausing to watch a bumblebee lumbering around the bells of a foxglove and a song thrush savaging a worm.