Distant Choices (34 page)

Oriel ignored that, allowing him to show her around the effervescent, exceedingly fashionable town he seemed to know so well, succumbing quickly enough to its charm to be aware that, were it not for her nagging anxiety about Kate, the prospect of spending Christmas here – without the Stangways, without Susannah, without Morag, even without her mother – would not have dismayed her. A Christmas without obligation, alone with a man who, because he was richly, unashamedly self-indulgent, created circumstances of luxury and pleasure which indulged her too.

How restful: and what an odd word to apply to Garron Keith who never rested anywhere, whose explosive energies carried him from one building site, one boardroom, one country, one enormous, richly-seasoned meal, one grand hotel, to the next without ever – so far as she could see – the least sign of flagging. A demanding man too, and hard to please, who, giving excellent service himself, expected it from others, so that woe betide any cab driver who delivered him a minute late at his destination, any waiter who brought him a less than perfect and less than gigantic beefsteak, any hotelier who failed to provide him with the best accommodation in the house, anybody anywhere who attempted to fob him off with excuses as to why a thing could not be done when he made it an iron rule never to accept and never to offer any excuses at all.

Yet, nevertheless – compared to the ceaseless patter of small irritations, trifling distresses, little nervous spites and vanities and suppressions encountered day in, day out, at Lydwick and High Grange – how restful.

She travelled back there two days before Christmas with at least three times more luggage than she had taken away with her, not quite certain, up to the last moment, whether or not he might tell her, when they reached Leeds, that he was going on to Glasgow or Cardiff or Land's End even, and send her on the complicated road to Lydwick alone. But he came with her, the cosseted atmosphere of fur rugs, footwarmers, silver-topped flasks of brandy and coffee, reserved compartments, private rooms at wayside inns where the landlords saw every reason to treat a former, very generous bricklayer like a king – which was
his
idea of winter travel – still wrapped around her until the instant she crossed her own threshold. To be greeted by a committee of Morag and Susannah with the information that Jamie had a serious chill, the Christmas Day turkey had not been delivered, while the Boxing Day goose was certainly too small, her mother had expected her home at least two weeks ago and was ‘most surprised'at the delay, the tunnel at Merton Ridge was flooded with rainwater, and her friend Miss Woodley, from Ullswater, had died.

‘Christ,' said Garron Keith, ramming on his hat again and striding out of the door which had not even had time to close behind him, only one item of the catalogue of errors appearing relevant to him.

‘Two navvies have drowned,' shouted Jamie, appearing at the head of the stairs in his nightshirt. ‘Two little ones who couldn't keep their heads above water. The tall ones got out all right.' And since he was certainly going to be tall himself, Oriel could see him wondering how much, if at all, the small men really mattered.

‘Get back to bed,' she said.

‘He has given us rather a lot of anxiety,' murmured Susannah.

‘Oh – I expect he'll live, by the look of him.' As Miss Woodley had not. But Miss Woodley had been old and at peace with herself, her life fulfilled and satisfied. And over. How much – how terribly – she would miss her. How dreadful that she would never see that living garden, that silent house by the lake again.

‘Jamie has been coughing all night for a week,' said Morag, her body taut with accusation, meaning, Oriel supposed, ‘While
you
have been flaunting yourself before my father in foreign hotels, spending his money and keeping him away from
us
; at Christmas, and when we needed him.'

‘We have brought lots and lots of presents,' she said.

‘My father,' said Morag, her accent, Oriel noticed, so much improved that it could have been mistaken for Susannah's, ‘always does.'

The presents were unpacked and set out on the hall table, the excitement effecting a miracle cure on Jamie and on Elspeth too who had been sinking, this last few weeks, into a lethargy which Susannah had feared as the beginning of a ‘decline'; although the gold-wrapped, beribboned package had little effect on Morag who appeared to regard all this extravagance – perhaps correctly, thought Oriel – as a bribe.

Other matters were also settled, the goose and turkey, the right amount of holly and mistletoe for the house and where to place it, whether to follow the new fashion for Christmas trees, brought over from Germany by Victoria's Prince Albert.

‘Yes,' chorused Jamie and Elspeth.

‘In the Western Isles of Scotland where we always go for Christmas …' began Morag.

‘We eat herring and oatmeal,' scoffed Jamie, ‘and sleep in wooden boxes like coffins built into the wall.'

‘And we have to help with the housework,' said Elspeth disdainfully, being well on the way to forgetting that she had not always had a maid to make her bed and do her hair.

‘
And
help fillet the fish.' This was Jamie again. ‘Outside on the beach in the early morning when it's freezing – biting – bitter cold.'

‘And it smells,' said Elspeth, looking as if she might faint at the memory.

‘It's healthy – better …' muttered Morag as, most unusually for her, she turned and, quite definitely, fled away.

In tears?

‘What's
she
crying for?' asked Jamie, who did not care.

‘For Aunt Flora and Grannie Macleod, I expect,' said Elspeth, her nonchalance letting it be known that she could no longer feel these people to be very closely related to
her
.

‘For Aunt Flora?' echoed Jamie, looking puzzled about it.

For her mother, perhaps? Oriel had wondered how Garron Keith, town-dweller, far more at ease with the smokes and steams of industry than the mist of a moorland sunrise, had met and married a fisherman's daughter from those remote Scottish islands. She knew now – the wine having turned him sentimental on one or two occasions – that Morag Macleod had been a parlour-maid in a doctor's house in Newcastle, a respectable girl who, when the strapping young foreman of a navvy gang had made her pregnant, had assumed rather than expected that he would marry her. And now, twelve years later, here was her daughter, another Morag, pampered with gifts from Paris and Cannes which had failed to impress her; and her daughter Elspeth queening it – rather too readily – over housemaids such as her own mother had once been.

‘I'd better go after her,' Oriel said. But Susannah had already done so, her skirts swishing up the stairs, her voice reaching them on a breathless note as she called out, ‘Morag – what is it, dear? Now
do
open the door. You can tell
me
.'

And it was not until Susannah returned, keeping silent about what, if anything, she had been told, that Oriel, having gone through her letters and invitations, sent off a note to her mother, and snatched a moment or two to think of Miss Woodley, had any chance of asking for news of Kate. And, of course, her child.

‘Oh yes –
our
little goddaughter,' beamed Susannah, meaning, of course, hers and Morag's, since Oriel – she felt certain – had understood straight away that all the nonsense about proxy had been – well – just nonsense really. Just a whim of Kate's, best forgotten, particularly since Morag had behaved so beautifully at the christening and was taking the responsibilities of godmother so much to heart. Oriel would not wish to deprive her of that.

Oriel did not suppose so, although, in fact, she made no definite answer.

‘So your goddaughter is doing well, Susannah? And Kate? I wrote to her several times and have had no answer.'

Susannah shook her head, assuming an expression Oriel supposed to be pity. Poor Kate. But Susannah, virgin daughter of the vicarage, felt obliged to speak so guardedly of all matters relating to the intimate processes of marriage and motherhood that even Oriel, with direct experience of sensuality, could hardly understand her.

The birth had been difficult, of course, but then, somehow, one had always expected that of Kate, with whom nothing had ever been simple. Was that Maud's voice, Oriel wondered, talking through Susannah? And if she did not care to nurse the child herself had there been any need to make such a fuss about it, when so many ladies, these days, felt they had done more than enough simply by bringing an infant into the world and saw no cause for high drama in leaving it, thereafter, to others? Surely
that
was a hint of Evangeline? But Kate
had
made a fuss,
had
been highly dramatic. Or else she had said nothing at all, for days – and days – on end, huddled in bed with her face in the pillows and her eyes open just staring at the wall, refusing to wash or let them brush her hair or change her linen, pushing away all food, all advice, all sympathy, picking up one of her pillows and hurling it – simply hurling it – at anyone who went on too long trying to be kind.

A shocking performance, the whole household walking on tiptoe and poor Francis haggard and quite grey with worry, looking older every time one saw him; which had been very often, of course, since one had felt in honour bound to do what one could, no matter how loudly Kate howled at one to leave her alone, and spilled the hyssop tea one had specially brewed for her, all over her valuable antique counterpane.

‘I felt sure I had heard her talking about hyssop tea,' said Susannah, looking hurt. ‘And I assumed it was a favourite …'

‘Yes,' said Oriel. ‘I do see that you would, Susannah. Well – I don't suppose I can manage to see her today but I will drive over – somehow – tomorrow.'

‘Oh no, Oriel. There would be no point to that. The Mertons have taken her.'

‘I beg your pardon.'

‘You didn't know?' Susannah appeared surprised that the doings of the Mertons had not been published in the Paris press. ‘Oh yes – your mother seems to think they have made a great mistake. In inviting Kate and Francis to the Abbey for Christmas, I mean, and then up to their castle in Scotland until the end of February, when they are all to come back here for Dora Merton's birthday dance. So we shall none of us see Kate until then. Oh yes – we are all invited to the dance. Your mother says it is to compensate us for having Adela's wedding in London. She thinks
that
was a great mistake too.'

Evangeline drove over an hour later to express her opinions herself, showing cool displeasure at finding Susannah still in residence in her daughter's house, and Oriel herself busy in her larder, checking over the Christmas plum cakes and puddings, the stand pies and port-jellies and chestnut stuffings, the mince pies and oyster patties her husband had told her to provide with a lavish hand.

‘Susannah, my dear, how is it you have not yet gone back to the vicarage? Run along now and pack your belongings and I will take you home in my carriage. Your place is with your mother, surely, with Christmas almost upon us. Especially since she has lost Quentin.'

Susannah, brought up very strictly to obey her elders, at once retreated.

‘Lost Quentin, mamma? What do you mean?'

‘Oh – nothing, dearest. I am only making mischief. He has established himself so comfortably in his rooms in Hepplefield and misses his family so little that he can spend no more than Christmas Day with them. Letty is quite distraught – as you would imagine. Does it really matter?'

Not to Evangeline, certainly, who was still incensed not only by the Mertons'sudden appropriation of Kate, but by the manner in which she had learned of it, not from the Mertons themselves but from her own coachman whose ‘cousin' – for want of a better word – was a parlourmaid at the Abbey. Obviously they were doing it for Francis. Obviously one's heart bled for the poor man, tied to a wife in the grip of a melancholy which could very well prove fatal, and with the girl he ought to have married tied – so hurriedly – to somebody else …

‘Please, mamma …'

‘Nonsense, Oriel. I am speaking the truth. Occasionally I find it refreshing. The Mertons pity him. We all do. And when they have spent a Christmas with Kate in her present mood we shall very likely pity the Mertons. She is a spectre I should not like to see sitting at my festive table, I do assure you – with her hair unbrushed and her nails dirty and her skin like damp clay. And her
eyes
just boring holes in the wall, or the carpet. And all, my dear, for the very common-or-garden reason that she has had a baby. Good Heavens, Lady Merton is so very particular she cannot sleep twice between the same sheets, and his lordship cannot bear silence. He is positively uneasy unless one constantly chatters to him – about this and that …'

Usually about himself, of course. Flattery? What – Evangeline wished to know – was so wrong with that? A social device, a tool, which she had always employed to advantage in much the same way as the Mertons'other guests, sophisticated, attractive people, would also do, encouraging Francis – soulful and sorrowful and interesting as he currently was – to join their company and ignoring the nuisance Kate, who, for all they cared, could sink into the melancholy pit she seemed so intent on digging, and drown.

And both the Merton girls had been ‘fast'. Yes, of course they had. ‘High-spirited'one had officially called it. But ‘fast' – and often furiously so – would have been nearer the mark. Dora – who had never concealed her partiality for her Cousin Francis – still was. Fast and rich and over twenty-one, an age at which, if she took it into her head to elope with the squire of Dessborough, as her Aunt Celestine had done with his father, one could hardly stop her.

‘Aren't you looking rather far into the future, mamma?'