Distant Choices (30 page)

He hoped – kneeling now beside her – that she never would.

‘Do you want a
great
many children, Francis?' she said, her voice thin and, once again, ending very abruptly.

‘Shall we have this one, first, and see how we go on? We may find one to be quite enough …'

‘So you don't want me to be a fruitful mother, either.'

‘Kate?'

‘It had better be the dinner-parties, then. Would you like
that
?'

‘Rather better, I think, than the hyssop tea.'

‘Very well,' she said.

It would, after all, be a kind of freedom, to poise, pen in hand, over those precious invitation lists, crossing out the names which did not please her. Aunt Maud. Aunt Letty. Constantia who could talk of nothing but babies. Quentin, perhaps. Or perhaps not, since he seemed far more amusing now that he no longer threatened her and had taken up residence in Hepplefield well away from his mother. Dare she even invite the Mertons, the whole pack of them, and ‘forget'to send a card to Evangeline? For the space of an idle, faintly malicious morning – the one on which Francis had agreed to sit as a magistrate on the same bench as her father and had spent an hour, in her presence, discussing with him the proper hand-rearing of pheasants and the new detonating guns to shoot them with – she believed she could. Until she heard that Oriel had come home again and remembered she was Evangeline's daughter.

She wrote a note at once and received an immediate reply. ‘Dear Kate, do come and see me.' ‘Dear Oriel, I have so much to tell you, and to ask. Please come and see
me
.'

But the first day of Oriel's return to Lydwick was taken over entirely by domestic crisis, due largely to the presence of Susannah Saint-Charles who, having offered to come and help with the children while Oriel was away, had spent her time quarrelling with the new governess on the subject of her failure either to curb the vanity of Elspeth, the prettier of the girls, or to do something – quite urgently, Susannah thought – about the coarse language of the boy, Jamie, who had spent
his
time repeating, for the sheer pleasure of setting Susannah in a flutter, every bad word and vulgar expression he had ever heard. A varied selection, it seemed, culled from the vocabulary of Scottish fishermen, Irish bricklayers, the colourful ribaldry of Tyneside which came all too easily to his father's tongue, chanted with a high-pitched relish which had given Susannah a headache and caused her to speak sharply to the governess again.

Miss Moorhouse, therefore, was waiting, tight-lipped, in the hall as Oriel, tired from her journey, came through the door, wishing to be the first to state her case.

‘Mrs Keith, it may not be my place to say so, but Miss Saint-Charles – although one must assume her to have the best intentions – knows so little of children that – really – I am forced to say she does less good than she probably intends …'

‘Oriel – oh dear – what a time we have had.' Susannah had positioned herself on the upstairs landing by Oriel's bedroom door. ‘Such a time. I have hardly slept all night, worrying about whether I ought to tell you. But really, there is no shirking it. I am so sorry, Oriel, but your Miss Moorhouse cannot control those children.

And in fairness to Mr Keith – since one wishes to do one's best for him – you will have to speak to her. Is he not with you?'

Oriel shook her head which, she noticed, was just starting to ache.

‘Oh – I assumed he was seeing to the horses – or the baggage?'

‘No, Susannah. He has continued on to Glasgow.' And in order to avoid Susannah's uncontrollable disappointment, quickly added, ‘I think I will just take off my hat and gloves and wash my hands before speaking to anyone.'

In the eight weeks of her marriage she had spent only three of them with her husband, the other five alone in this house with his children, carefully, quietly approaching them as one approaches shy woodland creatures, making no sudden movement to startle them, no unexplained demands, taking one considered step at a time and learning, assessing, as she went; not expecting them to love her, since they had not chosen her, after all, not expecting to love them – at least not yet, possibly not at all – aiming rather for acceptance, liking, for contentment rather than happiness, presenting herself as the friend she wished to be, rather than the mother they all knew she was not.

Only Morag of the cold, watchful eyes had truly resisted her, just as only Morag – and Oriel herself – seemed capable of tolerating the awkwardly passionate, possibly well-meaning, certainly far from happy Susannah.

‘I hate her,' said Elspeth to whom both love and hate came easily, bursting through Oriel's door before she had removed the first hat-pin. ‘She watches and fusses – that Susannah – and says I'm vain and quotes words at me from the Bible that sound cruel and make me dream. And then she talks about cholera in the navvy huts …'

‘Cholera? Has Jamie been up there? Susannah …' she went to the door, knowing Susannah would not be far away, ‘
is
there cholera on Merton Ridge?'

‘Oh, it appears not. According to Dr Merewith. Although – according to the Revd Field, our curate – it is only a matter of time. And I am bound to agree with him.'

‘There was cholera once before,' said Jamie, gleefully appearing from nowhere. ‘Bad cholera. At a place like Merton Ridge. So many dying that the contractors ordered a stock of empty coffins. And when the navvies saw them being carried up the hill to camp they all took fright and ran away – to places like Lydwick and Hepplefield, where all the people ran away from them. My dad told me.'

‘Good heavens,' breathed Susannah.

‘Ah well …' said Oriel. ‘I will just wash my hands. Oh – Morag. There you are.'

‘When is my father coming home?' said Morag, her eyes ever watchful, her tone implying ‘What have you done with him?'

He had galloped off to Wales the morning after the wedding, returning ten days later to spend a week with her, his presence filling every room, dispelling the cool good-order she had been maintaining with his demands for food and drink whenever he happened to be hungry or thirsty – very often indeed, it seemed – filling every ash-tray with his cigars, forever opening windows and ordering the carriage at all hours, interrupting the girls'speech and deportment lessons, the process of ‘polishing'them he still required, with sudden picnics, pony rides, visits to the best shops, and only the best shops, in town.

Making love to her, too, every night and every morning and sometimes in the afternoons, causing her considerable embarrassment on two occasions when Susannah, having called to voice some complaint about conditions at Merton Ridge, had stayed on to press flowers in the nursery albums with Morag, showing not the least suspicion of anything amiss when Mr Keith suddenly called his wife away. Susannah judging the act of sex, no doubt, by the manner in which it was practised at the vicarage, strictly in the dark when all the rest of the family had retired to bed, although Oriel – feeling as if she had been committing adultery rather than lying obediently in a conjugal embrace – had felt less certain, on returning downstairs, of Morag.

He had gone away again after that, first to Carlisle, then rushing down the length of the land to Cornwall, back again to Wales and then to London where they had just spent a week together. Seven days of luxury and open-handed spending, gold bracelets on her arms, new gowns and hats, long, sumptuous dinners, magnums of champagne, theatres, her body aching and feeling bruised by his, although there was nothing to show on the surface, her compartment on the train back to Leeds full of parcels tied up in gold ribbon for the children.

‘I'm going on to Glasgow,' he told her in Leeds, the first she had heard of it. And so she had travelled to Lydwick alone by road with all her luggage, a ‘fine, strong woman' who could find her own way home and then set to rights – before she had even taken off her hat – any little difficulties or dilemmas she might find waiting there.

‘Oh – I forgot to tell you, Oriel. Cook would like a word with you. She says her stove has become impossible, which I told her seemed strange to me since it is brand new. However, she was most insistent and seemed not to realize I was only trying to help. She says
you
will understand.'

‘Thank you, Susannah.'

Well, at least she had washed her hands now and made herself decent, even freshened her skin with a lotion she made herself – and had been teaching Elspeth how to make – of lemon balm, chamomile and marigold.

‘Oh, and by the way, Oriel, there is a letter from your mother. Her coachman brought it over quite early and seemed to think it urgent. It is on the hall table with all the visiting cards. I'll show you.'

‘Thank you once again, Susannah.'

Evangeline had written explicit instructions that Kate should not only be encouraged to pursue the Mertons but guided as to the most effective means of so doing. ‘She has become their cousin-by-marriage, after all, and must behave accordingly. Lady Merton, I admit to be somewhat vague and the girls are quite foolish but their generally weak intelligence and lack of any ideas of their own makes them so vulnerable to persuasion – does it not? If one can get close enough to persuade, that is. Kate has that opportunity. Do take it for her, darling.'

And although she had not written ‘It should have been yours in any case,' Oriel understood.

But Susannah was hovering. ‘Should you wish to send an answer at once I had better tell them to get the horses out again. Shall I? There is a note from Kate, too.'

So there was. A tight, impatient scrawl climbing up the page, corner to corner, which Aunt Maud would never have allowed to pass her scrutiny in the ‘old days'. Ten months ago.

Sitting down at her rosewood desk in the drawing-room window overlooking an acre of smooth lawn and young, carefully spaced rose-buds, she took out her own light blue notepaper – Susannah still hovering – and in quick, perfectly straight lines, penned her replies. She would drive over to High Grange and see her mother tomorrow afternoon, which would also give her the opportunity of taking Susannah back home to the vicarage. Kate would be welcome to come and see her as soon as she chose.

She came the next morning, straight after breakfast, alone and riding a black mare which caused considerable consternation to Susannah who, although unable, as an unmarried lady, to mention the subject of pregnancy, nevertheless felt it her duty to warn Kate of the dangers of horseback riding at such times.

But Kate, who had barely tolerated Susannah in the past, ignored her now, entirely dispelling the faint hesitation, the moment of distance Oriel had felt by throwing thin but surprisingly determined arms around her neck and hugging her tight.

‘Oriel – you look more like a swan than ever.'

‘And you –
Kate
, you are looking very smart …'

‘Oh, Paris did that, I suppose …'

Then it had done well, the severely tailored black riding-habit, the white stock, the polished top hat which had certainly been made for a man with an audacious drift of wholly feminine white gauze trailing around it, the crimson rose on her lapel, all giving her a sharp-cornered, highly coloured elegance, somewhere between male and female which both disturbed and held the eye. Not a pretty girl, of course. But who else looked like her, who else, with that schoolboy's stride and those abrupt, bony shoulders, could nevertheless appear so
female
– an altogether different quality from feminine – that even Susannah, who secretly wished very much to look like Oriel, was puzzled by her.

Kate, beginning now to create her own illusion, from a red rose, a length of white tulle, another of dark, dramatically cut cloth, as Oriel had once created it for her with a scarlet sash, and Francis, quite by accident, with a gold sari.

‘Is that a
man's
hat?' asked Susannah.

‘Yes. And the riding-habit was made by a man's tailor. What of it? Come, Oriel, show me your house, and all your lovely new furniture – Heavens, I've never seen anything newer – that nobody but you has ever sat on. Such fun that must be – isn't it? – when we were both brought up sitting on whatever our great-great-greater grandmothers could be bothered to leave us.'

‘Kate,' said Susannah, much shocked. ‘How can you say that? Dessborough is so positively antique …'

‘That
is
,' Kate murmured, ‘rather what I said …'

The house was displayed, room by room, the children called to be presented to Mrs Ashington of Dessborough, whose severe and very personal smartness did not appeal to Elspeth – the pretty one – who also wished to look like Oriel, and found no favour either with Morag – the watchful one – who knew, by acute instinct, that the lady in the top hat and veil was not much interested in children. Only Jamie, ready to be interested in anybody who had something he wanted, shook her hand cheerfully and peppered her with questions about her horse until, not concealing how much he irritated her, she told him, ‘It's a horse, for Heaven's sake. It bites at one end and kicks at the other. Go and have a look at it and see which end gets you first.'

Susannah was shocked yet again. Oriel smiled and, the sun being hot, suggested a glass of lemon cordial under the chestnut trees, where Kate, once refreshed, could tell them about her travels.

‘Oh – are you coming too, Susannah?' Kate asked.

The cool drinks were brought, Susannah sipping nervously, Kate draining her glass like a huntsman in an inn-yard and setting it down on the table with a clatter.

‘Oriel?' she enquired, her eyes narrowing almost dreamily, fixed somewhere at the far edge of the lawn among the brave young lupins just bursting into flower. ‘Oriel, do you know what hyssop is?'

‘Yes.'

‘Oh good, I thought you would. Do tell me.'