Dorothy Eden (13 page)

“Not Regent but King,” Beatrice wrote back firmly. “And don’t be one in exile for too much longer, please.”

Though she really hadn’t time to be lonely, except in bed at night when sometimes a fearful shivering desolation came over her, and she told herself she was crazy for the way she was living her life. She should be in Italy with William. She should never let him out of her sight.

Only then he might really want to run away. She had always sensed his necessity for freedom. And after all, if she idled abroad, who would buy the babies’ shoes? Who would pay the servants’ wages, keep the carriage and horses, provide Mamma with a new gown a week (and not one too many, Mamma insisted).

Morning always brought back commonsense, and the day fell into its familiar pattern. Although Beatrice had made one important alteration while William was abroad. She stayed at Bonnington’s most of the day, and had her lunch with Adam Cope and Miss Brown. They sat at the quietest table in the restaurant beneath one of the potted palms, ate absentmindedly, and discussed business for an hour or an hour and a half. These meetings were satisfyingly productive. Adam Cope, an elderly thirty-nine years, unmarried, with no life but Bonnington’s, a fact Beatrice thoroughly appreciated, provided the balance between Beatrice’s wilder ideas, and Miss Brown’s old-fashioned caution. Compared to her sparkling William, Adam was a dull grey stone of a man, but his ability and integrity and loyalty were qualities for which she was always grateful.

He had bachelor rooms somewhere in Bloomsbury, but one wondered if he ever occupied them, for one never saw him arrive at the shop or leave it. He was simply always there.

Miss Brown lived with an aged mother in Doughty Street. She, too, spent very little time at home. Perhaps the old mother was too querulous. Once, when she was small, Mamma had taken Beatrice to visit there, and they had sat in a small stuffy front parlour eating sticky cakes, while old Mrs Brown related how she had once used to watch Mr Charles Dickens coming in and out of his house opposite. Miss Brown always carried faintly the stuffy smell of that parlour about her person. This worried Beatrice a little, with the fastidious noses of customers in mind, but she decided it was too small a matter to mention. Miss Brown’s sensitive feelings would be hurt, and fortunately she didn’t hang over customers. She had excellent dressmakers and fitters to do that.

Beatrice was shrewd enough to see that the stiff old-fashioned figure of Miss Brown in her high-necked black dress with a cameo brooch at her throat, was a personality, and a part of Bonnington’s. She had almost forgotten that once William had said that she ought to go. Dear William was quite ignorant of the different facets of successful shop-keeping, and she was glad this was so. It would dim his radiance a little for her. He was, and must remain, quite above moneymaking.

William returned home in the late summer, then went off to Germany (he wanted to look at the Gothic castles, which he thought ugly but interesting). He wrote, “Prince Wilhelm still thinks of nothing but playing soldiers—he should have been an Overton! It’s said that he can’t wait for not only the truly ancient Emperor but his own father to die so that he can get on the throne and turn Germany into a military power. He is encouraged by that old war-horse Bismarck, of course. I shall never like the Germans. Their stolidity is suspect. It gives way to emotionalism and hysteria too quickly. Take Wagner, for example. And as for German women…”

Beatrice imagined that unfinished sentence meant contempt, but William had surely never gone abroad to study women. Had he?

She seemed to be always seeing him off at Victoria station, or, more joyfully, meeting him, espying his debonair figure in the distance and flying towards him. They were fresh to each other again. The reunion with the children, when they all sat cosily round the nursery fire, was so heart-warming that the separation seemed worthwhile.

Beatrice’s secret plan for a trip to Madeira at Christmas came to nothing because Mrs Overton was ill. At least, that lady said bravely, she was only a little poorly, her silly heart was misbehaving. She must curtail her activities and lead a terribly dull life sitting quietly at home and entertaining not more than two or three people at a time. William and Beatrice and the children must visit her on Christmas Day but perhaps they wouldn’t mind making their stay fairly brief as she found the dear children a little exhausting. Unless William cared to stay on for an hour or two to help her stave off loneliness. He could follow Beatrice and the children in a cab, couldn’t he?

Mrs Overton, frail and almost transparent in her exquisite lacy shawls, as vain as ever, but with a bleak look in her faded blue eyes, had Beatrice’s reluctant admiration. She must have known that death was approaching, and she, with her bird-like brightness and love of company, would be terrified. But she intended to keep her standards of behaviour until the end. She would be gracious, charming, witty and gay, and never never commit that most deadly sin of being a bore or a burden.

So Beatrice took Florence and Edwin home to spend the remainder of Christmas Day with Mamma.

After eating heavily of roast turkey and plum pudding, Mamma had dozed over the fire most of the afternoon. She was wearing one of her elaborate ruffled and braided dresses and looked like a vast sofa. Edwin screamed in her company, as he had also screamed in Mrs Overton’s, and Florence, who could be an aggravatingly uncommunicative child, made no sound at all.

It was not a successful Christmas Day. And in the dreariness of a cold and foggy January, William began to wheeze and cough and said he must get away to the Swiss Alps. It was not a long journey. The doctor had assured him that his mother might live for several more years, but if there happened to be a deterioration in her health he could be home in twenty-four hours.

Beatrice recognised the familiar pattern. Dear William, with his extreme sensitivity, hated illness, and death appalled him. He must put distance between himself and such calamity. Besides, he was not exaggerating his own symptoms. He breathed as if he were continually climbing uphill.

She clung to him on Victoria station.

“My darling, do take care of yourself.”

“I always do. You know that.” He was growing more cheerful. He always became animated in the midst of the bustle and noise and billowing smoke of Victoria station. “I’m sorry you’ve got such a useless fellow for a husband, Bea. And you’re such a superlative wife.”

Superlative? An intimidating word. Was it meant to be flattering?

“Then you truly don’t mind me being a business woman?”

“It makes you happy. So that’s perfectly splendid.”

And absolves you from feeling guilty about your absences? Beatrice wondered. Then she observed how the suffocating smoke from the engine was making him choke, and, forgetting her treacherous doubt, was filled with her constant anxious tenderness.

“Darling, button up your coat. Don’t go on deck without your scarf. And try to sleep on the train.”

“Stop fussing, Bea,” William said, pleased nevertheless. He was the most charming invalid.

The guard’s whistle blew. He kissed her quickly, his lips cool against her own. She shivered slightly. It was a bitterly cold day. “Don’t work too hard, Bea. Kiss the children again for me.”

He was on the train and leaning out as it moved off.

“Goodbye,” he called. “Goodbye, dearest.”

The slender handsome figure in the caped greatcoat dissolved into the grimy smoke. She was left standing alone, as she had been too often. Never mind, she would make a brief call at Bonnington’s on the way home. They had been unpacking a consignment of rugs from Persia and Samarkand. Colourful and romantic, and, although expensive, eminently saleable. She could pretend today that they were flying carpets that would carry her to the Swiss Alps, and another honeymoon with William.

They had always promised themselves another honeymoon, though, with William turning to her in bed less often (it was his poor health, wasn’t it, she told herself, as she lay there restless and longing), he probably now regarded honeymoons as something they had completely outgrown.

How did he occupy his evenings in those handsome and luxurious hotels he frequented?

Well, never mind.

Florence had invented a new game, of packing her bag, an old wicker basket of Nanny’s and catching a train. She was being Papa going abroad. “Goodbye, Queen Bea. Goodbye!” Now wherever had she heard that?

She adored her Papa, which was rather a pity, Nanny Blair confided to Lizzie, because he didn’t take too much notice of her. She was too quiet and self-effacing, and had no looks to speak of. A crime in
this
family. Master Edwin was another cup of tea, he looked like a cherub though he seldom behaved like one. All of Nanny’s famous discipline was lost on that child who was chronically naughty.

Nanny, suffering from a sense of failure, talked darkly of absentee parents (as if they were the same as those infamous absentee landlords who caused so much discontent in Ireland), and said the children, bless their innocent hearts, were suffering from lack of love. Not that the mistress wasn’t a good woman, but she had too many other matters on her mind. Running a big store, indeed! If she had wanted to do that, why had she bothered to marry and have children?

One occupation or the other but not both, thought Nanny Blair, and resolved to find another position in the spring.

Mrs Overton died suddenly before the spring and William had to come hurrying home to attend the morbid ceremonial of opening the family vault, and having a new slender casket laid within its dark recesses. He was overcome with grief. His eyes were red with weeping. This family was haunted by death, he declared. Bea must promise never to die. The children must never die. He lay in her arms the night after the funeral, clinging to her almost as if he were a small boy and she his mother. Just as she felt she was unable to bear her hungry desire any longer he made love to her with a violence he had never before exhibited. As if he were expressing a desperate defiance against death. At last not having to conceal her own passion she responded fiercely, sharing the soaring heights and the joyful release.

It was a haunting and beautiful night, and it seemed entirely right to Beatrice that she should have conceived her third child. William agreed with her. Between them, they had achieved a victory over death, and this child could not help being remarkable, with more beauty than Florence and more stability than Edwin. Florence, of course, might improve in looks as she grew older, and Edwin certainly learn to master his tantrums. Nevertheless, the new baby was to be everything.

It was a great pity that in the fourth month Beatrice miscarried. Indeed, it proved to be a tragedy, for the doctor told William that it would be unwise for his wife to attempt to have more children. Beatrice was bitterly angry with that stupid old-fashioned interfering Doctor Lovegrove. If she wanted to risk her life it was her own affair. She did want to risk it. For how otherwise would she ever bring William willingly back to her bed?

He had been repelled by her miscarrying. Now he would think her unhealthy and unwomanly, and avoid her. He would be afraid he might be the cause of her death.

So how was she to face an eternity of lonely nights?

William would go abroad again, and this time she would be in torment, certain that he now felt legitimately free to seek the company of other women. Even her suggestion that she should join him was politely but firmly dismissed.

Dear Bea, what would Bonnington’s be without their queen sitting on her little throne inside the gilded cash desk. You can’t abdicate now, Bea. Besides, you would be miserable without your figures and your sales reports, and your new merchandise. I know you, Bea, totting up figures in your head
all
the time.

He scarcely ever called her dearest nowadays.

But she went on loving him. That was a condition she could change even less than she could change the natural satisfaction profits and growth in the shop gave her.

She was enormously pleased when at last William’s book, after five years of research and work, was finished, and sold to an eminent publisher.

William, who had found the loss of his manuscript a physical deprivation, intended to fill in time before publication date by going on an ambitious trip to South America to catch butterflies. He said there were fantastically beautiful specimens there. If Bea was lonely, perhaps her mother would like to come and live with her. And, since Nanny Blair had also decided to leave (she preferred small babies, she said), weren’t the children old enough for a nursery governess?

Mamma permanently in Overton House, Beatrice thought in high indignation. Over-eating, looking at the lovely rooms with her empty eyes, spoiling the children, complaining. How could William suggest such a thing! But the nursery governess was a good idea. She would attend to that.

So they had another farewell at a railway station, again on a raw January day, with a yellow fog swirling about and, as usual, making William choke. Beatrice was fighting tears. She never cried in front of him, she knew how much it embarrassed him. He wouldn’t have minded the tears of a young and pretty girl, but of his sturdy sensible Bea, goodness no! Besides, if she began to cry, she would sob, and that really would be embarrassing. People would think he was ill-treating her.

“What shall I send you from Rio, Bea? Silks? Native carvings? No I won’t, you’ll only want to start selling them in Bonnington’s.”

She shook her head, making herself smile, asking anxiously, “You’ll be back in the summer?”

“I’ll be back in July for publication date.”

“Shall I arrange a party?”

“You don’t like parties.”

“I’ll like this one. I’ll be so proud of you.”

He kissed her forehead, then her lips, briefly.

“Don’t wait for the train to go. It’s so cold, Dixon will be having trouble with the horses. Tell him to be careful with ice on the roads. Heavens, I’m glad to be leaving this filthy winter.”

He waved from a distance, his face radiant with his eagerness to be gone. She lifted her gloved hand in response, then tucked it back in her muff, and turned and walked away, a cosy figure in her fur-trimmed coat and skirt. An attractive figure, some men might have said. Her eyes were bright with the stubborn unshed tears, her cheeks rosy from the cold. She had gained poise with maturity. She had a pleasant frank look without any coquettishness. And a nice air of quiet authority.