Distant Choices (33 page)

‘You will allow me, Francis dear boy, to speak a word to the good woman in your kitchen as well – while I am about it …'

He considered for a moment asking her how she dared even to suggest such gross interference, but the flow of energy, the spark necessary to ignite his temper utterly failed him. He was defeated by these people, appalled by them,
diminished
by them. That most of all.

‘Miss Stangway – just as you please.'

She walked away from him, sure of her purpose, while he, with no purpose at all beyond the desire to escape, to
run
– now, not a moment to lose – into breathable air, untainted space, hesitated in the hall, feeling that he might very likely choke to death where he stood. And not much caring.

Ought he to go upstairs again to Kate, lying torpid and stifled in her bed? But Kate did not want him. He was sure of that. In which case, might he not just slip off, take a horse, lose himself somewhere for an hour or two, a day, ride on to some place beyond the sound of Dessborough church bells, ringing for his daughter's christening, or her funeral? He knew the doctor did not think she would live. Nor – he regretted – did it seem to matter to him one way or the other. He had not even looked closely at her. Only at Kate, struggling in the final trap of her maternity like a fly in syrup, her lungs clogged with it, her body still rigid with shock. And he knew that whether the child lived or died there would be no other, that even if he had to live with her as a sister he would never make her pregnant again. Neither of them could stand it, and no child, surely, ought to be brought into the world so tragically unwanted.

Including this one – this new Celestine Ashington – for whom no place either in her mother's or her father's heart existed. Poor little mite, indeed. But there were many such and – if she lived – a great many plain, sexually timid women like Susannah who reserved their passions for ‘motherless'children, a great many ‘ladies in reduced circumstances' who would take employment as governesses, a great many schools for the finishing and polishing of young ladies whose mothers had no taste or time for such things.

And – eventually – he might even manage to get away again. Even to Mecca.

Hearing Maud's brisk step in the lower hall, coming no doubt to suggest more household improvements, he ran upstairs and strode along the corridor, finding himself outside the nursery door which he opened and then, as an entirely logical process, went in.

‘Oh – Mr Ashington.' He saw, at once, that the stiff, starch-and-vinegar nanny newly arrived from Manchester, did not think it the business of fathers to invade any nursery of hers. ‘May I do something for you?'

He doubted it. And what a dismal room this was, low and dark with bars across the window and that farm woman sitting with her pendulous, swollen breasts and her vacant expression in the old rocking chair, knitting what appeared to be a sock with fat, noticeably dirty fingers. Were her breasts likely to be cleaner? Inwardly shuddering, he realized, with astonishment and considerable distress, that he did not want his daughter to be fed at
that
breast, to cling there in her total helplessness, at the mercy of
this
woman's ignorance and superstitions.

And this other woman's acid chill.

His
daughter. Bending over the cradle, his nostrils twitching at the wet-nurse's raw, ripe odours, he saw her clearly for the first time, one creased, dark cheek on the lace pillow, a wisp of black hair straying from a lace bonnet, a mottled little fist as powerless as a leaf in an autumn storm, a tiny mouth pouting a huge indignation; an angry little air of hoping that all her requirements in life's adventure, just starting, were going to be met.

And met by him, of course. ‘By you, papa …' Would she really call him that? Of course. ‘By you, papa, since no one else seems likely to make much effort on my account. And
I
have done nothing wrong. Not yet, at any rate.'

Suddenly a terrible, a well-nigh insupportable alarm bit through him.

‘Nanny,' he said tersely. ‘This room is far too cold. Have them build up the fire at once. And I would like a private word with you – outside – please … Now tell me – do you have confidence in that woman in there? Well, if you think it unwise to replace her just now you will have to keep a close eye on her. She is not to be left alone with the child at any time. And please oblige me by supplying her with plenty of soap and water. Well, yes, nanny. So that she can
wash
. You will further oblige me by making absolutely certain that she does.'

Celestine Clarissa
Oriel
Ashington was duly christened the next morning and continued, thereafter, slowly but surely, to gain weight and confidence enough to make a great deal of racket whenever ‘life's adventure' happened to displease her, and to gurgle her approval when it did not. A pretty child, although it was some time before the godmother for whom she had been named had an opportunity to say so, Mrs Oriel Keith being detained in France rather longer than expected by her husband.

It was not a journey she had wanted to make, a spur-of-themoment decision of Garron's which, with Kate's confinement so near and her mood so unstable, had caused her an immediate pang of dismay.

‘Garron, I can't be ready by morning.'

‘Yes, you can, bonny lass. No doubt about it.'

His final word, which no consideration of leaving his own children, let alone Kate's, would sway. Nor would he specify the date of their return. When it suited him, she supposed. Yet his intention was certainly to please her, she knew that. And, understanding by now both his massive physical desire for her and the weight of his jealousy, his refusal to share so much as a particle of her attention with anyone – male or female – whenever he was there to enjoy it himself, she had gone off to pack her bags, to make arrangements with the governess and Jamie's harassed tutor, to write a note to her mother explaining her absence, and one to Susannah whose feelings would have been hurt otherwise and who replied, at once, that she would come over to Lydwick and stay with the children as often as she could.

And indeed, had it not been for her anxiety about Kate, the pressing need she felt to be there,
with her
, when labour began, she would have thoroughly enjoyed travelling with a man so careful of his personal comforts, so ready to heap every luxury upon himself, and therefore upon her, as Garron.

‘There's business, of course, to be attended to …'

‘Of course.'

‘But plenty of time, in and among, for French food and wine,
and
French gowns and hats.'

‘Thank you, darling.'

‘And French perfumes. Heavy ones, to last the night …'

They would not sleep much, she supposed, nor did it trouble her any longer, a ‘fine, strong woman'who could arch herself into his embrace and inspire such ardour that the heat of it blinded him – she hoped – to her own still uncertain response to pleasure. Whispers of it, merely, growing so pale by comparison with his huge joys that they invariably evaporated, half felt, just strong enough to tantalize her.

Not that she worried about it overmuch. Nor Garron either, she supposed, so long as she remained cheerful, passive, absolutely and always to hand whenever his hand was there to take her. And when it was not? She did not question his fidelity. She simply knew that there could be no question whatsoever about her own.

‘All right, bonny lass. I'll build a few French railways and buy you a diamond for every one. How's that? And then there's Russia …'

‘Is there really?'

‘Oh yes. A place that could do with some opening up, I reckon. What can I buy you from there? Don't be shy to ask, because when the Russian contracts start to come in they'll be enormous.'

‘Furs,' she said. ‘Sables.'

He nodded. ‘That's what I thought you'd want. Maybe next year. Now then, I have to be busy all day so take a walk around the town and buy
yourself
something – anything you fancy.'

In any town, too. London. Brussels. Rouen. The Paris of Louis Philippe the Citizen King, son of the great class-betrayer, the Duke of Orleans, who, joining France's first revolution had voted for the execution of his own near relation, King Louis XIV, only to go to the guillotine himself soon afterwards; thus escaping the rise and fall of Napoleon, followed by the resuscitation of the French monarchy by English dukes and Russian and German princes, and the reign of his own, now elderly son who had been put on the throne – largely because no one else had been available – by another revolution, not of the people this time, but by a consortium of bankers and businessmen.

A well-meaning but boring old gentleman, King Louis Philippe, it seemed to Oriel who met him on one of his famous strolls as she was shopping in the rue Saint-Honoré, recognizing him by the revolutionary tricolour in his hat, his umbrella, and the affable manner in which he would stop to shake hands and explain – if the person so honoured happened to be a pretty English lady – that he had been a close friend – a very close friend indeed – of Queen Victoria's father, the unlucky Duke of Kent. The very same duke who, after twenty-seven years of domestic bliss with his ‘dear friend'Madame de Saint Laurent, had pensioned her off in order to marry a German princess and breed an heir to the English throne. Victoria.

‘And how do you like our city?' this Monarch of the People asked Oriel.

‘Very much indeed, sir.' She had never spoken to a king before, finding him so exactly like any other self-important old gentleman – apart, that is, from the guards who were pretending not to guard him – that it took her a few moments to realize how deeply her mother would be impressed.

She wrote a note to High Grange, receiving in Evangeline's enthusiastic reply the news of the Ashington baby and how ably little Miss Morag Keith had represented Oriel at the christening.

‘Well done,' said Garron, pleased that ‘they', the leisured classes, old money instead of new, had singled out his daughter.

‘Yes. indeed.' She did not want to spoil his pleasure with her alarm, or irritate him with it either. ‘But if they had the christening so soon, then perhaps the baby is not very well …?'

He shrugged and glanced at the date on Evangeline's letter. ‘Still alive when this was posted, at any rate. And I know you wouldn't be wanting to cut and run home again, would you? Before we're ready?'

Of course not. This was
his
time, he was saying. And by no means over yet. There was the theatre tonight, a play which
she
had particularly asked to see, and dinner, in the Bois de Boulogne tomorrow with a pair of real Russian noblemen with money to burn and therefore plenty to invest in threading Russia with as complex a network of railways – if he had his way – as England. She had been looking forward to meeting them. She knew, without another spoken word, that he did not expect her enthusiasm to wane.

She could not, in all honesty, blame him for that.

She met the Russians, sparkled for one of them, became spiritual and soulful for the other, while Garron, whose jealousy of her time and attention did not spill over into business matters, sat back and watched the skill for which – both in his opinion and in hers – he was paying her handsomely. And because she had done well for him, because those two particular gentlemen, should they ever happen to have a railway contract at their disposal, would remember the name of Garron Keith because they remembered his wife, he decided to reward her with a trip south as far as Cannes.

A week, he thought. Or two, since he'd had a letter from a certain, influential German gentleman, spending the winter along the Corniche d'Or, who thought a railway connecting various commercial, possibly even military centres throughout the Germanic confederation, might prove convenient for his particular group of friends. And since no one at the moment knew very much about building railways except British engineers like Locke and Brunel and de Hay, and British contractors like Peto and Brassey and himself, it was essential – in his opinion – to get in, and
now
, before these other countries found out just how it was done.

And when Europe was exhausted there would be America – if he was quick enough – Africa, Australia, China, any place on earth where there were businessmen with goods to be moved to market, and generals with soldiers to be rushed into battle.

Two weeks, then, in Cannes, which would give them plenty of time to get home for Christmas. And, if not, then
his
children knew that business came before pleasure, and that if he missed one train he'd surely turn up on the next, bearing gifts the like of which they had not seen since the date of his last arrival.

She would enjoy Cannes. He'd even take her on to Monte Carlo and drive her past the Mertons'villa if she really wanted a tale to tell her mother. Although Cannes was the best place for
his
money, just a fishing village it had been, a few years ago, until one of England's more enterprising grandees, Lord Brougham, had been turned back at the border on his way to Italy because of some epidemic of fever or other, and had liked the little place called Cannes so much that he'd decided to build himself a villa here. Thus setting a fashion among the English aristocracy which had provided congenial summer employment for lads who knew how to lay bricks and dig foundations and had a taste for adventure to go with it, like the then very young Garron Keith. Yes. He'd seen Cannes for the first time with a bricklayer's trowel in his hand, and gone on the tramp through France afterwards to save the fare home. And now … Well – some day, when all the railway building was done, he might just come down here again, if he'd managed to stand the pace, and think about building a villa of his own. As near to Lord Brougham's as he could get; which, if nothing else, would always make his wife's mother jump at the chance of a visit.