Dorothy Eden (10 page)

It would be a pity, in a way, because Mrs William so clearly enjoyed driving off, her face glowing beneath her little tilted hat, a warm cape round her shoulders, the tartan carriage rug over her knees. She always looked, Cook thought privately, as if she had got up from a warm cosy night with the master in the old General’s bed.

And good luck to her. She was not one of those idle fashion plates. She was a nice simple kind little body with thought for others.
’uman
, said Cook.

Young Mr William seemed happy enough. One suspected he thought his wife a funny little thing, a bit of unexpectedness, but he had an easy nature and enough self-confidence to be quite undisturbed by malicious gossip.

He was a fortunate young fellow, getting up for his leisurely breakfast, his prolonged luxurious bathing and dressing, and then his writing or his cataloguing, or his walks on the Heath with a butterfly net.

And on Sundays the three of them, Mrs Overton, William and Beatrice, attended church, walking across the road and past the tilted gravestones as the bells began ringing. To all outward appearances they were the most affectionate of families.

In church Beatrice sang ardently in her gruff tuneless voice, thanking the Lord for her happiness.

Afterwards, they sat down to Sunday luncheon, soup, fish, roast beef, Cheshire or Stilton cheese and fruit. Later, if the weather were fine, Beatrice and William went for a walk on the Heath, if wet or cold, William dozed and she indulged in her favourite occupation of wandering from room to room, lingering in the dusky yellow drawing room, the mirror room with its vaguely haunted atmosphere, the library where William’s work lay spread on the desk.

She had everything. Or almost everything. If not yet her husband’s love, at least his affection and faithfulness. That limpid look in his brown eyes, and the casual touch of his hand sent her blood racing. If he didn’t turn to her in the big bed as often as she could have wished, she blamed herself, for too much desire. It was not ladylike and she must conceal it. He would find it a little overpowering. Until the time came when he shared it.

In the meantime, with Christmas approaching, she could dissipate her boundless energy in hard work.

She had plans for turning the shop into a festive fairyland. Carol singers, tinsel, snowmen, trees of holly, every purchase wrapped with extravagant yards of red ribbon, and an unlimited supply of pennies for the beggars and the shivering waifs who pressed hungry faces against the windows.

She knew that she was getting talked about, and not always flatteringly.

The thing was that if she were talked about, so was Bonnington’s.

“Beatrice,” said Mrs Overton, surprising Beatrice at breakfast, a meal which she liked to have downstairs alone. “This simply won’t do.”

Beatrice looked at the small erect figure, wrapped in soft white lacy wool. That wrap had not been bought at Bonnington’s, but it was rather desirable; one might do something about stocking such articles of feminine luxury.

“What won’t do, Mrs Overton?”

“You’ve been married for two months and you haven’t done a single thing about entertaining. That’s rather bad manners, my dear. You and William have been out to dinner several times—” (stuffy awkward occasions, when Beatrice had known she was looked on as an oddity) “and you’ve done nothing about returning hospitality.”

“I haven’t had time. I expected people to realise that. When Papa is better and able to take charge at the shop—”

“But since you’re becoming such a dedicated shopkeeper, when will that be?” Mrs Overton’s voice, with its high bright tones, was perfectly polite. “I’m afraid William and I can’t wait. I’ve taken it on myself to send out invitations for a soirée on Saturday week.”

“In my name!”

“In yours and William’s names, of course, dear. And don’t worry about the organisation, I will undertake that.” She looked at a businesslike list, in her hand. “I’ve asked the Marshes, the Prendergasts, the Andersons, Lord and Lady Tyler, the Caxtons, Colonel and Mrs Mainwaring, Sir Humphrey Bowles, those pretty Morrison girls. You know them all.”

The decorative Laura Prendergast, Beatrice thought. Hadn’t she found a husband yet?

“Does William know about this, Mother?”

“We’ve discussed it. We didn’t make a definite plan.”

“Is he—has he told you he was feeling bored.” She risked the word, “Unhappy?”

“A little neglected, dear.”

“But it is so important to keep the shop going, to pay the wages, everything. I thought he realised that.”

“For a short time, of course. But not forever. Life doesn’t depend entirely on the price of French brocade.”

“If William is unhappy—” Beatrice muttered, and hated showing her uneasiness to Mrs Overton.

“We would be the only house on the Heath not to have a party before Christmas,” said Mrs Overton with her pretty smile. “That would seem mean, to say the least.”

Left alone to drink her cooling coffee, Beatrice gnawed at her lip resentfully. Who, she thought sourly, was going to pay for all this festivity, for all the champagne that undoubtedly would have been ordered, for the cold salmon and turkey, the hothouse strawberries and asparagus.

She pulled herself up sharply. Those might have been Papa’s thoughts. They were unworthy of her who loved her husband. Mrs Overton was perfectly right. It was high time she did her duty as a hostess.

Only one would have preferred to select one’s own guests.

Whom? Miss Brown? Adam Cope, who lately had made no secret of his admiration for her? Adam wouldn’t have objected to a shopkeeper wife. She didn’t have other friends. She had had first her long dream of William, and her dream of Bonnington’s, and now both of them in reality. She didn’t need friends.

One thing was certain, if there were to be a party in the music room she wouldn’t skulk upstairs this time, out of sight. She would be in the centre of it all, the hostess, the wife. She would shine.

William was relieved that she was taking it so well. He had been a little nervous when his mother had first suggested it. He had thought Beatrice ought to be consulted. But there had never been an opportunity. She was always out of the house.

Not entirely true, Beatrice thought. She said nothing, she was too happy that William was being close and loving. He was saying that she must wear the cinnamon lace ordered in Paris. She had had the final fittings at Worth’s Bond Street salon, and the gown had hung unworn in her wardrobe ever since.

It was snowing a little that night. Some of the ladies arrived in a nervous state, saying the horses had slipped on ice, and there had been near accidents. Hawkins was busy upstairs with warming possets, and smelling salts.

Laura Prendergast, having shed her wraps, was the first to come running downstairs, her curls dancing. She was dressed entirely in white, and looked fragile and insubstantial as a snowflake. William’s eyes were warm with admiration. He didn’t bother to conceal it. He had always admired pretty women. Besides, as his mother had said, he was starved for gaiety. Could this be a dangerous state for a young man not entirely in love with his wife?

Beatrice decided there and then to reduce her involvement with Bonnington’s. Money was important for the purpose of showering luxuries on her husband, but personal attention might be more important.

She could begin now by proving that she could be a good hostess.

After the first half hour, however, she had the sensation that the guests (damn swells, Papa would say) were sweeping over her, taking possession of the house as if they owned it by right, and as if she were dumb and invisible.

It was her own fault, she told herself. She should have taken the trouble to get to know William’s friends. But it was Mrs Overton’s fault, too. One suspected deliberate malice in that lady for inviting all the most arrogant people who could be relied on to make remarks such as, “So this is William’s bride at last! Now
where
have we seen you before?”

It was easy enough to counter that sort of thing.

“Behind the counter in my shop,” Beatrice answered one lady composedly. “Aren’t you the person who wanted the Venetian lace? It’s made on the Island of Burano, you know. I am having a special order sent over. Do remember to enquire for it in a few weeks’ time.”

More difficult was the way William kept disappearing. But then she should not watch him so closely.

Be polite to people, she admonished herself. Make small talk, if you can. Arrange for the music to begin.

Soon the carols were being sung lustily, and while the guests were enjoying this diversion, Beatrice took the opportunity to go in search of William.

She found him in the mirror room, with Laura Prendergast in his arms.

That beautiful small self-indulgent room of another philandering Overton, with the slender white form of Laura and William’s dark shadow blotting out the reflection of the candles. They were ghostlike. There was nothing ghostlike about their kiss. By its very length it suggested unmistakably warm blood.

Beatrice stood transfixed until William’s laugh, that short tender husky sound, made her step back hastily into the passage.

She must not let him find her here. If he thought she were spying on him he would never forgive her.

She knew immediately that the forgiving would have to come from her. In the space of a few seconds she had to lose whatever complacency she had had, and become wise, far-seeing, disciplined, patient.

Pressed back against the wall, clenching her fists in agony, and resolving never again to wander during a party in this house, she slowly disciplined her chaotic thoughts.

William had never kissed her in the mirror room. But then she had never worn a romantic white dress and drifted like a snowflake. It was wiser, too, with her short figure, that their embraces were not reflected by candlelight in dim glass. They would scarcely look poetic, would they?

She was trying hard to be sensible and realistic. She had been told constantly that the man she wanted to marry was a gay philanderer. Accepting that, she had married him. So why did she now think she had cause for complaint?

Only that she had hoped that marriage had contented him. Those embraces in the old General’s bed, weren’t they enough?

She knew now that they were not.

There was nothing to do at this minute but to be practical once more, to walk quietly away, return to the guests, behave as if nothing had happened. And never mention it. Never let the accusation cross her lips. Never, in her marriage, resort to the disaster and destructiveness of quarrelling.

But her lovely world had shivered and cracked. It had been as fragile as one of those treacherous Chippendale mirrors. Now it must be put together somehow, the cracks papered over.

When William woke the next morning with a sore throat and some difficulty in breathing, Beatrice sadly recognised the pattern. He was always going to be ill when he was upset. Her hope that the scene she had glimpsed had been only light-hearted flirtatiousness vanished.

William was fretting for the lovely Laura, and regretting that he was tied for life to so dull a bride.

“I’m sorry, dearest, I seem to have caught a cold. It’s damned tedious for you.”

“For you, too,” said Beatrice. “You must stay in bed today. I’ll ring for a hot bottle, and hot drinks. No, I’ll go and make a hot drink for you myself. I can’t trust Lizzie to do it, she’s a very stupid girl.”

“Won’t that make you late? Don’t keep Dixon waiting. That new cob is a bit fidgety.”

“I won’t go to the shop this morning,” Beatrice said.

“Why not?”

“Because I prefer to look after my husband.” She felt his forehead for fever, then kissed it lightly. “Do you object?”

William looked surprised, then sleepy and contented.

“You know that I adore being pampered.”

Beatrice fancied the heaviness in her heart lightened a little. Being an adored nurse was better than nothing. It was a crumb to ease her starvation.

“And then I have had a brilliant idea. Why do we need to spend Christmas in England? You know how bad the damp and fogs are for your chest. Why don’t we go and find the sun?”

William was up on his elbow.

“Bea! Do you mean that?”

“Of course. I’ve never spent a Christmas abroad, as you very well know. I hadn’t been abroad at all until we went to Paris, and I’ve never made up to you for having to end that trip so suddenly.”

“You don’t have to make up to me.”

“I may not have to, but I would like to,” Beatrice said earnestly. “It came to me last night. I’ve spent so much time at the shop, and neglected you, and you’ve been so sweet and uncomplaining.”

William’s eyes had narrowed.

“What about the shop, if we go?”

“Oh, Papa’s better. He’s almost well again. With the staff Bonnington’s have now he can manage perfectly well. So where is the best place, for your chest, my darling? Egypt, perhaps?”

“I’ve never been to Egypt,” William said animatedly, and she knew the battle—not a battle, only a skirmish, something the old General would regard as elementary—was won.

“But one thing, William,” Beatrice said later, as she stood by his bedside, with a steaming hot toddy, “when we come back, I think your mother would be much happier if she had her own establishment. After all, if I am not to go to the shop, two women would fall over each other, in a house this size.”

“Once you thought it was a palace.”

“Once.”

He reached out and patted her hand. He was profoundly selfish, her William, but when it came to loving him, she had no sense at all.

“I understand, dearest. Mothers-in-law can be the devil. I thought mine was better than most, but you see it in a woman’s way. Well, if we can run to two establishments—I don’t honestly think the mater will mind.”

They would have to make those new ideas at Bonnington’s work, Beatrice was thinking. Otherwise Papa was going to be furious about the additional expense. First the brougham and cob, then the trip to Egypt, then the small tasteful house for Mrs Overton in a fashionable part of London. And was Papa fit to take over again?