Distant Choices (8 page)

She would find, instead – as her mother had done – a host of ardent beginnings which would founder, she supposed, one after the other, on the hurdle of those questions which could not be answered, those loose ends which even in her mother's agile hands could not be tied.

She bit her lip.

‘I suppose you know …' Kate said. ‘That – well – you and I? – I suppose you realize …?'

‘No,' Oriel said gently, raising her hand palm outwards to push the words away. ‘I know nothing about it. And neither do you. Much the best way.'

‘Do you believe that?'

‘Of course. I have to live in the world as I find it, Kate. And I am not in the least suited, you know, to travel by camel.'

Kate grinned again. ‘So you will just have to make sure of a comfortable coach and horses – as best you can.'

And this time Oriel did reach out, smiling as she placed the tips of her fingers on the tousled crown of Kate's head, a butterfly touch, soon gone.

Dear little sister. Dear little hurt, offended soul.
Words she could never bring herself to speak. She knew that.

‘Give me your skirt to mend,' she murmured instead. ‘We can't have you catching your heel and falling off your camel.'

They had
not
said:

‘My mother was a madwoman – or so they tell me – prowling the attic in a filthy artist's smock and painting insulting portraits of my father, who hated her. Which means that I might go mad and be hated too. So they say. How that terrifies me.'

Or: ‘I am the illegitimate child of a scheming woman who used me – and still uses me – to lay claim to your father. Which means – in this strait-laced, self-righteous world – there is no place for me. No man to marry me. Although my mother will offer me in turn to every man who approaches, as she once offered herself. How I dread that.'

They had not said: ‘We are sisters, with more, perhaps, than a casual tie of blood between us.' Yet, beyond all question, they were in no doubt that they had heard and accepted every word.

The Gore Valley was, for the most part, prone to some excitement the following spring, at the launching upon its sturdy scene of two new events, the rise of Mrs Evangeline Stangway to the head of local society and the arrival of that modern miracle the railway. The dazzling Mrs Stangway being welcomed by all it seemed, even by those hoping for the pleasure of seeing her fail; the railway causing far more serious and therefore even more diverting disagreement between those who wanted it – the industrialists and shopkeepers for instance – and those of a more traditional mind who did not.

A time of harsh resentment – absolutely no less – by all those to whom the railway appeared in no way a blessing. By the owners of canals, for instance, who risked serious damage to their trade in the conveying of heavy goods from industrial centres to the sea. By the landlords of coaching-inns in remote situations who, without the stage-coaches and the mail-coaches, the constant demands of travellers for bed and board and fresh horses, would see their livelihood, like the roads themselves, fall into decay. By ‘landed gentlemen'who, ever since the truth of what a railway actually meant had burst upon them, had set up a great caterwauling, quite often shot-gun in hand, that the infernal machines would startle their horses, disrupt the seasonal habits of their grouse and pheasant, scare off the foxes and thus ruin the hunt. By local farmers who maintained, just as stubbornly, that engine sparks would set fire to their crops and sour the milk in their cattle, causing them to abort. By certain clergymen of a puritanical persuasion who being concerned above all things with the preservation of the Sabbath, had seen in the proposed use of trains for the quick delivery of mail, a most pernicious temptation to Sunday travel.

By Lord Merton of Merton Abbey, the greatest land-owner in the area, whose estates included the only moorland ridge through which the track could effectively be tunnelled to join the main-line to Leeds and who, although quite seeing the advantage of the railway in getting himself, and his guests, from the House of Lords or his club in St James's Street, up to Merton for the grouse-shooting in a few hours flat, had, nevertheless, declined disdainfully and absolutely to allow the foul-mouthed, iron monsters a foothold on his land.

‘By all means,' he had said, ‘run the trains to Hepplefield.' Why not? Since Hepplefield, already tainted by its factories, its steams and damps and its eternal blanket of yellow fog, would hardly notice the addition of another metal monster or two. No, there was nothing to spoil in Hepplefield, nor in the blasted heath around it. Nor anything that Lord Merton himself particularly valued in the market town of Lydwick, since the land thereabouts belonged mainly to his cousin, who had been living abroad these twenty years. Lydwick, therefore, might have its station and Cousin Eustace his profit from the sale of the acreage to build it on, with Lord Merton's blessing. But the parkland and woodland of Merton, the deep meadows in the valley bottom watered to a lush emerald by the River Gore, the neat farms and cottages, even the desolate, rock-strewn upland that was Merton Ridge, must remain undefiled.

No. Railways could never be the business of a gentleman. An attitude in which Lord Merton remained unshaken, joining a great many of his fellow peers in their apprehension about the effect these trains might have on the working classes, the opportunity offered to them by this cheap new transport
to move about
, to congregate together, in fact, for the airing of grievances and the plotting of treason. A possible and very rapid mustering of subversive elements within the population which could never be done effectively by stage-coach at a rate of fifteen or so passengers a time, and at a cost, from the rebellious North to London, of what amounted, for a working man, to a full year's wages.

And the railways were only asking a penny a mile.

Lord Merton opposed it, therefore, and encouraged his acquaintances, their tenants, servants and hangers-on to do the same, the Valley's ‘landed gentry' happily turning a blind eye to any gamekeeper who happened to take a shot at a railway engineer, mistaking him –
of course
– as he bent down in the long grass to do his measuring, for a rabbit. These ‘mistakes'occurring so regularly and with such painful accuracy that the first surveyor had abandoned the work altogether, while the second had employed a bare-knuckle prize-fighter to walk the route with him.

But the survey had been completed nonetheless, and Parliamentary sanction eventually obtained to break into the Valley at Merton Ridge, thus proceeding through Lydwick, High Grange and Low Grange towards Hepplefield, every millmaster on the way putting forward his claim to a station as near as possible to his factory door or a branch-line to take him and his merchandise to the precise spot where it was most profitable for them both to be. And when work finally began a great deal of the credit seemed due – and not only in the opinion of his mother – to Quentin Saint-Charles, who, it was generally believed, had earned more in legal fees, that one year, from railway business than his employer, Mr Titus Price, had earned in twenty.

An astute young gentleman indeed, Mr Quentin Saint-Charles, who had known, by instinct one could only assume, how to plunge into that sea of complex legal negotiations which even the whisper of a railway appeared to generate, and emerge not only unscathed but with his hands full of gold. So young too – and so
supple
– to have settled the prickly consciences of the Sabbath Day Observers by working out a timetable by which no train would arrive at any Gore Valley station during the hours of their church services, thus making it easier for them not to notice. So clever of him, too, to have tempted Lord Merton – who ought really to have been above temptation – with the offer of a special branch line to Merton village, thus giving his lordship an extremely pretty little station of his own and saving him the trouble of fetching his grouse-shooting guests by gig from Lydwick. Very clever. Even though it had been rumoured, of course, that what had really put an end to his lordship's lobbying in the House of Lords to defeat the Railway Bill and his sudden decision to sell land to it instead, had been another offer – also through Mr Saint-Charles – of at least ten times more, cash in hand, than those bleak moorland acres at Merton Ridge could ever have been worth to anybody else.

He had appeased the farming community too by pointing out to them that their milk could be moved by rail to Hepplefield at a speed which would entitle them to call it fresh and encourage suspicious city housewives to drink it. Which had been far from the case up to now. He had even gone to London, in the company of railway directors and high-ranking engineers, to present the Gore Valley's case to the Palace of Westminster, and had dined, one glorious evening, at Lord Merton's house in Grosvenor Square. An occasion to which his mother could never refer without tears of pride and joy, leaving his Aunt Maud to inform anyone who might wish to hear that, as a result of all this excellent work and the prospect of more richly-deserved successes to come, his employer, Mr Titus Price, had offered him a partnership.

A young man, then, who knew how to cut his coat in cloth of every shade of opinion and wear it to his own best advantage. A young man whose evident self-esteem Evangeline would not have cared to encourage by giving a special ‘railway dinner', at which he would unavoidably be among the guests of honour, had she not seen her own advantage very clear. Quentin had dined in Lord Merton's house in London, admittedly as one of a large party and on railway business rather than as a personal friend. But he
had
dined there, nevertheless, which – since Letty was clearly not up to it – would make it quite natural for her to return the invitation on Quentin's behalf. And rather difficult, moreover, for his lordship to refuse if she also invited a sufficient number of railway personnel, since he had used some of that shocking purchase price for Merton Ridge to become a rather major shareholder of the railway himself.

And although Evangeline anticipated no difficulty in making herself Queen Regnant of High Grange and its rather too near neighbour of Hepplefield, and was already a most welcome visitor in the upper echelons of Lydwick and several very pleasant ‘gentlemen's residences'in the villages beyond, she had failed so far to attract so much as a sign of recognition from Merton Abbey. Not that the Mertons were much in residence, being not only the greatest land-owners in the Gore Valley but the fortunate possessors of a castle in Scotland, a hunting-box in Leicestershire, a villa in Monte Carlo, a tall, Grecian-pillared house in Grosvenor Square, coming up to Merton only for Christmas, or to shoot grouse in August, with one or two brief visits in between. Great people, in fact. Very great, who might possibly condescend to invite the first lady of High Grange to one of the overcrowded impersonal receptions they gave at the Abbey, every five years or so, when they happened to remember their duty of
noblesse oblige
to the local gentry and the better half of Hepplefield.

It would not do for Evangeline.

‘Lady Merton has never accepted an invitation to any house in the neighbourhood,' Maud told her acidly. Nor, indeed, did she accept Evangeline's, fearing, perhaps, to open a floodgate if she did, thus making her visits to Merton wearisome with the importunities of local squires. But Lord Merton, who was pleased with his railway station since it was not just everybody who had one and had found it quite a talking point at his club, agreed not only to eat Evangeline's dinner but to have his two daughters and any friends they felt inclined to muster, to join him at High Grange for the musical reception to follow.

A triumph indeed. Very nearly a social miracle. A ‘foot-in-the-door' of Merton Abbey, at any rate, no matter what she had to do to contrive it.

‘Could it be,' murmured Matthew, wicked tongue in cheek, ‘that his lordship has a guilty conscience? Goodness me, how middle-class.'

But Evangeline, so long as his lordship sat at her table for all to see, did not care if he had become inflicted with a social disease or had lost his wits.

Cook, of course – whose name she managed never to remember – would have to go. Cook went, to be replaced by a cadaverous woman from a domestic agency in Manchester who brought her own two kitchenmaids with her and was sufficiently secretive and superior to inspire at least a measure of confidence in Evangeline.

‘I think, perhaps, nine courses, Mrs – er, Widdop? Does that dismay you?'

‘By no means, madam. And will madam be requiring two choices of soup, or three?'

Evangeline was pleased, although she settled for two soups only, a creamy, complicated asparagus, a clear beef essence heavily laced with sherry, and two fish courses, plain but perfect salmon or devilled whitebait, spreading her entrées to include beef olives, dainty little rabbit quenelles, lobster cutlets, a vol-au-vent of sweetbreads and mushrooms in red wine, followed, as a fourth course, by a choice between a roast of lamb or plump capons garnished with ham and parsley and green peas.

The game dishes, of course, would be a problem. No larks until July. No woodcock or grouse until August or September. But there would be quails, she supposed?

‘Certainly, madam.'

‘Ah yes,' she sighed. ‘One seems hardly ever to be without them. So you will do something to them – well – a little out of the ordinary, I am sure, Mrs – Widdop? Will you not?' While as for the sweets, a good, rich syllabub and some kind of chocolate pudding full of cream and vanilla could usually be relied on to please gentlemen, while the ladies might enjoy an orange water ice, a whisper of meringue, such fruit as might be in season. Or, better still, fruit that was not in season and could, therefore, announce itself as having been fetched, at great cost and inconvenience, from some distant greenhouse.

Oriel, of course, would decorate the table, her mother knowing no lighter hand, no keener eye than hers when it came to swathing ivy and mosses around the table silver, making garlands and posies of flowers; nothing more exotic than daffodils, redcurrant and forsythia, she supposed, at this time of year, which Oriel would transform into nests of blossom and foliage in which to set the place-cards and menus, written in her elegant copperplate, and – naturally – in French.