Dorothy Eden (2 page)

Beatrice, tongue-tied but with her watchful eyes missing nothing, sat at the tea table being waited on by two maids in immaculately starched caps and aprons, while Caroline at the head of the table, gave orders with her nauseating airs and graces.

Later, Caroline’s mother, a small dainty woman with a pretty pink and white face, like painted china, came in to meet her daughter’s guests, and apologised for her husband not making an appearance. He was a retired General, a good deal older than his wife, who now suffered indifferent health. His temper was precarious, and Mrs Overton asked anxiously that there might not be too much noise, otherwise Papa would begin thumping with his stick.

Caroline’s health had been adversely affected by living in the extreme heat of Delhi and Cawnpore as a child. Nor was her younger brother, the heir to this lovely house, as strong as could have been wished. It really looked as if the first winds of winter could blow the entire Overton family away, like leaves. Beatrice had seen the large vault in the churchyard just across the road from Overton House, which held various Overton remains. All of the family, including those here today, she thought morbidly, would eventually be neatly put away like the bales of goods kept on shelves in the basement at Papa’s shop.

The church itself, was full of Overton memorials. The precise white slabs shone out from the spider-grey walls.

Colonel Rufus Edwin Overton, killed in action while storming the Heights of Abraham… Midshipman Charles Edwin Overton died of wounds received at the Battle of Trafalgar… William Rufus Overton died of fever in Calcutta in the service of the East India Company… Lieutenant Colonel Charles Henry Overton cruelly murdered by mutinous Sikhs in Delhi… Major William Edwin Overton, seized and killed by brigands while travelling in Afghanistan…

And the women, the wives of these loyal and adventurous men, Caroline Sarah, sorrowing widow of Charles Henry Overton… Mary Susan, widow of Rufus Edwin Overton and adored mother of ten children… Elizabeth, dearly loved wife of William Edwin Overton, died in childbirth leaving an only son William Rufus Charles who has erected this memorial to his parents…

The only son referred to in this memorial was, Beatrice knew, Caroline’s father, General Overton, covered in honours for his outstanding services to his Queen and country in the Crimea, Afghanistan, the Punjab, Zululand, and now somewhere upstairs listening testily to the shrieks and giggles of twenty young ladies in their best party dresses.

Like the family vault, this house with its arched and pedimented doorways, its wonderful flying staircase, its smell of beeswax and pot-pourri, was much more solid and permanent than its inmates had ever been. Beatrice responded strongly and intensely to it. Not long ago her father had told her that he was getting rich, rich enough to buy her anything she wanted. But he had been thinking in terms of clothes and jewellery, a new carriage and a pair of greys.

If she had said she wanted none of these things, but only to own a house like Overton House, he would have given his great roar of laughter. Such houses couldn’t be bought, even by self-made millionaires. They had to be married into. And it was scarcely within the realms of even her mother’s most ambitious dreams that Beatrice should become an Overton wife and bear Overton children (eventually to be tidied away into that solid everlasting vault).

Nevertheless, Beatrice had a stubborn nature. During that birthday tea, where she felt like a nervous little goldfish in polar waters, she toyed with the thought of living in this charming house. That desire might have to remain a fantasy, but at least, while she was here, she was determined to see more of the house.

When tea was over and Caroline asked her guests to come into the garden again, Beatrice deliberately lingered behind. Presently, unnoticed, she slipped away and ran up the lovely flying staircase that curved into a dim passageway overhead.

If she encountered anyone, she would say she was looking for the bathroom.

The stairs were covered with a leaf-green carpet that extended along the landing at the top. It was like walking on a well-cut lawn. Portraits of dead and gone Overtons dressed in all the splendour of military and naval uniforms, hung over the staircase, the walls were papered in a fascinating design of leaves and branches, the same bosky green as the carpet. The sun shining through the window at the far end of the passage was like light filtering into a forest.

All the doors were closed. What rooms did they conceal? The yellow drawing room would be on the ground floor, but one of these closed doors might lead into the mirror room or the china room. Her heart beating rather quickly at her temerity, Beatrice made a wild guess and opened the door on her right.

Instantly, out of the gloom a tremendous voice shouted, “What the devil do you want?”

Jumping with fright, Beatrice hastily retreated, only to be commanded to come back.

“Are you a new maid? Did my wife send you?”

Beatrice stood within the doorway, blinking until her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and she was able to see the red-faced gentleman with the white moustache sitting up in an enormous bed. He was fitting a monocle into his left eye, so that he could observe his visitor more clearly. He looked very bad-tempered, his bright blue eyes gleaming as sharply as glass between wrinkled eyelids.

Appalled, Beatrice found that she had stumbled into the General’s bedroom, and there he was sitting up in bed in his nightshirt. She could not have been more embarrassed if he had been naked. What an absolutely appalling thing to have done.

“Well, speak up, girl! Who are you?”

“Excuse me, sir, I was only looking for the b-bathroom.” Then, recovering partially from her shock, Beatrice realised that this terrifying old gentleman still thought her a servant. Indignation made her lift her chin.

“I am one of your daughter’s friends,” she said. “I don’t see how you could possibly mistake me for a servant.”

There was a silence, giving Beatrice time to wonder what new horror she had perpetrated. She refused to lower her chin, however, and the two stared at one another, the choleric invalid and the girl, plump and dumpy and dressed in an expensive but not beguiling dress of plum-coloured velvet. (Miss Brown, who always dressed Miss Bea, was quite unaware that her middle-aged taste was unsuitable for a fifteen-year-old girl going to a party.)

The silence ended with the General abruptly giving a loud guffaw and making Beatrice nearly jump out of her skin again.

“Come here, where I can see you. What’s your name?”

“Beatrice Bonnington, sir.”

“Bonnington? Haven’t heard that name. Who’s your father?”

“He’s Mr Bonnington of Bonnington’s Emporium.”

“Bonnington’s Emporium!”

“A shop,” Beatrice explained, since the old gentleman seemed genuinely puzzled. He screwed in his monocle more tightly, to look at Beatrice again.

“Then why doesn’t he call it a shop, instead of that damn silly fancy name?”

Privately, Beatrice agreed. She thought Emporium was pretentious, too. “I know what you mean, sir. When the shop’s mine I intend to call it just Bonnington’s. But Papa thinks customers like an emporium. It sounds more important. He says the turnover has nearly doubled since he put up ‘Bonnington’s Emporium’ over the front entrance.”

“Then if you take it down, and revert to being simply a shop, are you going to lose all this trade?”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so. But I do like to call a spade a spade.”

“I can see that,” said the General.

Beatrice was a little provoked. “How, sir?”

“By the way you look, young lady. Plain dress. Hair tidy but not fussed over. Good straight eyes. No looks to speak of, but they may add up into something one day. Or they may not, but either way it could be an advantage. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve studied enough women. So you’re one of my daughter’s guests. And I’ll wager she’s frilled and primped and curled, and made to look like a delicious nosegay.”

She was. And Beatrice had spent most of the afternoon both envying and scorning her.

“Don’t you like delicious nosegays, sir?”

“Adore ’em. But they’re deuced expensive, and deuced irritating, too.” (Now was he talking about his daughter, or his pretty china doll wife?) “There’s plenty of room for the plain ones. They often wear better. Don’t scowl at me, my dear. You’ll remember what I said one day, and you’ll agree with me.”

Would she? Beatrice wondered, with grave doubts. Just at present she had to defend her appearance as much as she could.

“I look like this because Miss Brown from Ladies’ Fashions in my father’s shop dresses me. Mamma says she would be hurt to the bone if she weren’t allowed to. I expect she’ll dress me for my wedding, too.”

“Of course she will. You can’t go about hurting people to the bone. If you marry a man of any sense he’ll realise that.”

“And not mind me looking dowdy?” What an extraordinary conversation!

“Certainly not. If he does I recommend you to waste no time in seeing your solicitor and getting an annulment.”

“I think you’re making fun of me, sir.”

The General leaned forward, looking like an old tired eagle. His open nightshirt showed a skinny corded neck. All at once he was not in the least alarming.

“Believe me, my dear, that was the very opposite of my intention. I was simply giving you some advice, and I count myself quite a worldly fellow. I’ve known enough women with plenty of looks, but when their petals begin to fall off there’s nothing there, not even a seed pod. They’re empty husks, and you’re damn tired and your heart gives out.” He leaned back against his pillows looking very tired indeed. The monocle had fallen out of his eye, taking the piercing blue light with it.

Beatrice was dimly aware that she had seen one of the last revivals of a fierce and hardy spirit.

“I’ll go now, sir.”

His eyes were closed.

“I’m sorry I detained you, Miss Bonnington. I believe you were looking for the bathroom. It’s opposite, the first door on your left. But I say,” one eye, again fiercely alert, opened, “you’re not going to be one of these fearful women who go into business, are you?”

“I’m afraid my parents wouldn’t allow that. But I’m an only child so Bonnington’s will be mine one day. I’ll be fairly rich, Papa tells me.” Then she shut her mouth firmly, remembering too late that one of the things that stupid genteel dame’s school taught was never to talk about the thing that seemed to be uppermost in all adults’ minds. Money.

“Splendid,” said the old General approvingly, thus making nonsense of that rule. “Everybody admires a woman with money. She don’t even need looks.”

T
HREE WEEKS AFTER BEATRICE’S
exceedingly unorthodox encounter with General Overton, a letter arrived requesting her company to luncheon at Overton House on the following Sunday.

This was a very different affair from being invited as one of a gaggle of twenty classmates to Caroline’s birthday party. It meant that she had been singled out as an individual, a fact that pleased her mother but puzzled her more practical father.

“There’s something behind this,” he said suspiciously. “Do they want extended credit or cut prices?”

“Oh!” Mamma exclaimed, “you think of nothing but trade and customers.”

“What else should I think of, may I ask? I’m not in business to keep the swells.”

“I know why I’m asked to lunch,” Beatrice said. “It’s because General Overton regards me as a friend. I saw him in his nightshirt,” she added inconsequentially.

“Beatrice!” exclaimed Mamma. “What are you talking about?”

“I was looking for the bathroom and I opened the wrong door.”

“Couldn’t you have asked someone the way?”

“No, because I wanted to see the upstairs of Overton House. I went into the General’s bedroom by mistake, and there he was sitting up in bed, and we had a conversation.”

“What about, for goodness sake?”

“Things,” said Beatrice vaguely, knowing she could never repeat that extraordinary conversation to Mamma.

Anyway, Mamma was no longer listening, for her eyes had got their too familiar scheming look.

“What about the son? Did you see him?”

“No, of course not, Mamma, it was a girl’s party. Anyway, he sounds a milksop. He’s too delicate to go to school, so he has a tutor, and his hobby is catching butterflies.”

“Gad!” said Papa. “Tutors and butterflies!”

“He does sound awful,” Beatrice agreed. “But I may go on Sunday, may I not? I do so want to see Overton House again. It’s the sort of house I want to live in one day.”

“What’s wrong with this one?” Papa asked touchily.

“It’s not pretty, Papa. It’s not light and airy. It hasn’t got a staircase that wafts upwards.”

“Like a damn butterfly, I suppose,” Papa said sarcastically. “Well, I prefer solid comfort, sensible colours, modern sanitation. I expect they still have those old powder closets at Overton House.”

“Perhaps they do, but they’re not used for
that
purpose any longer. The bathroom I was in was just as modern as ours. The W.C. was decorated with garlands of flowers.”

“Good Gad!” said Papa.

Mamma, Beatrice knew, was delighted about her interest in Overton House, and even more so in the Overtons’ interest in her. But Papa was, as always, disappointed in her. She couldn’t help not being a boy, but at least, being a girl, she might have been pretty, someone he could have displayed like goods in his shop window.

He puffed his lips in and out and finally said he supposed she could go to Overton House again. But he didn’t want her getting silly ideas about those swells, and above all he drew the line at any nonsense like rushing over the Heath with a butterfly net.

“Goodness, Papa, do you think I would,” said Beatrice.

But she did.

To her disappointment, she found that the General was not well enough to come down to luncheon, so she didn’t see that wild red face, full of mingled hostility and friendliness, again. In his place she met the son and heir, Master William, aged fourteen years and extraordinarily good-looking.

Beatrice had been prepared to meet a child, Caroline’s young brother, still in the nursery, delicate, spoiled and babyish.