Drop of the Dice (6 page)

Even now, although he was supposed to be talking to Leigh and Jeremy, his eyes were on me. He had probably noticed my rising colour and a certain flash in my eyes.

‘He, ha!’ he was saying. ‘“Get out,” said the King of France. Court of Saint Germain! What right has James to set up a court of his own when he’s been drummed out of the only one he could lay claim to!’

‘He had the permission of the King of France to do so,’ Jeremy reminded him.

‘The King of France! The enemy of this country! Of course
he
would do everything he could to irritate England.’

‘Naturally,’ put in Leigh. ‘Since he was at war with us.’

‘Was! Ah… was!’ cried Carleton. ‘Now what will happen to our little Jacobites, eh?’

I could not bear any more. I thought of Hessenfield, brave, strong, tall. He became taller in my mind’s picture as time passed, and so had I magnified his virtues, so diminished his faults, that he had become the perfect man. There was none like him and if he had been a Jacobite then a Jacobite was a wonderful thing to be.

‘They are not little,’ I burst out. ‘They are tall… taller than you are.’

Carleton stared at me. ‘Oh, are they indeed? So these traitors are a race of giants, are they?’

‘Yes, they are,’ I cried defiantly. ‘And they are brave and…’

‘Just listen to this,’ cried Carleton. His eyes opened wide so that the bushy brows shot upwards, and his jaw twitched, which usually meant he was suppressing amusement. He looked fierce, though, as he banged the table. ‘We’ve got a
little
Jacobite in our midst. Now, my girl, do you know what happens to Jacobites? They are hanged by the neck until they are dead. And they deserve it.’

‘Stop it, Carleton,’ said Arabella. ‘You’re frightening the child.’

‘He is not!’ I cried. ‘He just said Jacobites are little and they are not.’

Carleton was not going to be deprived of his teasing.

‘We shall have to be watchful, I can see. We must make sure that she does not start a conspiracy here in Eversleigh. Why, she’ll be raising a rebellion, that’s what she’ll be doing.’

‘Don’t talk such nonsense,’ said Arabella. ‘Try some of these sweetmeats, Clarissa. Jenny made them specially for you. She said they were your favourites.’

‘You talk of sweetmeats when our country is being put to risk,’ cried Carleton; but I knew he was only amusing himself at my expense and I was satisfied because I had made my point about the height of Jacobites and had stood by Hessenfield, so I turned to the sweetmeats and selected one which had a flavour of almonds which I particularly liked.

Carleton’s attention had strayed from me but he was still with the Jacobites.

‘They say the Queen favours her brother. That’s what comes of women’s reasoning.’

I looked at him sharply and said: ‘That’s treason against the Queen. It’s worse than saying Jacobites are tall.’

I saw his chin twitch and he was putting on the fierce look again.

‘You see, she will betray us all.’

‘It’s you who do what,’ I reminded him, ‘by speaking against the Queen.’

‘That’s enough, Clarissa,’ said Priscilla, who was always nervous of political issues. ‘Now I am tired of this talk and we will leave the men if they want to fight out their silly battles on the table. I should have thought the recent peace and all the losses we have suffered to reach it would have been sufficient answer to all their theories.’

Sometimes Priscilla, who was of a somewhat meek nature, could subdue Carleton as no one else could—not even Arabella. My grandmother was an unusual woman. She must have been to have borne my mother in secret in Venice. I was to discover how it happened in due course, because it was the custom of members of our family to keep a journal and in this they usually put down frankly and honestly what happened to them. It was a point of honour with them that they should do so; and when we were eighteen—or before that if the moment was ripe—we were allowed to read our ancestresses’ versions of their lives.

We were just about to rise and leave the men at the table when one of the servants came in, looking bewildered.

Arabella said: ‘What is it, Jess?’

Jess said: ‘Oh, my lady, there’s a person at the door. She’s foreign… don’t seem to be able to talk. She just stands there and gibbers saying… Miss Clarissa… and Miss Damaris… That’s all she seems to say that makes sense, please, my lady. The rest is all nonsense… like.’

Damaris had risen. ‘We’d better see what it’s about. She mentioned me, you say?’

‘Yes, Mistress. She said Miss Damaris… plain as that. And Miss Clarissa too.’

I followed Damaris into the hall. Arabella and Priscilla were close behind. The great oak door was open and on the threshold stood a figure in black.

It was a woman and she was clutching a bag. She was talking rapidly in French. It came back to me as I listened and I ran to her.

She looked at me disbelievingly. I had changed a great deal in five years, but I recognized her.

‘Jeanne!’ I cried.

She was delighted. She held out her arms and I ran into them.

Then Damaris was there. Jeanne released me and looked at her rather fearfully and began to explain rapidly and incoherently, but I could understand quite easily what she was telling us.

We had always said that she would be welcome. We had asked her to come but she could not leave her mother and grandmother so she had not gone with us when we left. But we had said she might come, and she remembered. Grand’mère was dead; her mother had married and Jeanne was free. So she had come back to her little Clarissa whom she had saved when there was no one to look after her. And she wanted to be with her again… and Damaris had said…

Damaris cried out in her very English French that Jeanne was very welcome.

Arabella, who spoke French tolerably well because during the days before the Restoration she had lived in a château there, waiting for King Charles the Second to regain his throne, said that she had heard all about what Jeanne had done for me and she would be very welcome here.

Damaris kept saying: ‘Of course. Of course.’

And I, who was suddenly transported back to that damp cellar with the hostile Grand’mère and Maman, and only Jeanne to protect me from the harsh Paris streets and from life, cried out: ‘Do you understand what they are saying. Jeanne? You are to stay with us. You have come to us and your home is here now.’

Jeanne wept and embraced me again, looking at me with wonder, as though I had done something very clever by growing up.

We brought her to the table where she opened her eyes wide at the sight of so much food. Damaris explained who she was and Great-Grandfather Carleton rose rather ponderously, for as I have said he was getting older and stiff in the limbs, though he wouldn’t admit it, and he told her in very anglicized French that anyone who had served a member of his family well should never regret it, and although Jeanne could understand very little of what he was saying, she was well aware of the warmth of her welcome.

Damaris said she was sure she was hungry. Hot soup was brought for her which she attacked ravenously, and then she was given a slice of beef. She told us how she had wanted to come to England but that it had been impossible during the war. But now there was this Treaty and the fighting had stopped she had at last found a boat to bring her across. It had cost her a great deal but she had saved when she did not have to keep her grandmother and her mother, so she had a little more money. She was ready when the peace was signed—and here she was.

So that was how Jeanne came to England.

I
T IS AMAZING HOW
great events which seem so remote from us can play such a big part in deciding the course of our lives. But for the great revolution when Catholic James had been driven from the throne and replaced by Protestant William and Mary, I should never have been born. And then my adventures in France were all part of the same situation. But the peaceful years I had spent at Eversleigh had made me forget such impressive conflicts and it was only when Great-Grandfather Carleton talked so fiercely of Jacobites that I remembered there was a struggle still going on.

Because of the peace, Jeanne was with us and something of even greater importance was to follow—and all because of the peace.

Jeanne had settled happily into our household; she seemed to be in a perpetual state of delight. She said it was like being in the
hôtel
and serving Lord and Lady Hessenfield again. To be assured of enough to eat was, during those first weeks, like a miracle to Jeanne. She talked volubly and I found I could chat easily with her and my early grounding in her language enabled me to pick it up again with speed. Jeanne had a smattering of English learned from my mother and from me and as she learned quickly we had no difficulty in communicating.

She told me how sad she had been when I had left, although she knew it was the best thing for me, and great good fortune that my Aunt Damaris had found me.

‘We suffered much in the winter when there was little to sell,’ she told me. ‘Then I must go out to wash floors… if I can get the work… and what did it bring? Nothing but a few sous. There were Maman and Grand’mère to keep. In the spring and summer I could manage with the flowers. I liked that. It gave me freedom. But to work for tradesmen… oh
ma chérie…
you have no idea. Those days in the
hôtel
working for milord and milady… ah, that was heaven… or near it. But this was different…’

She told me that she must work… work… work all the time, and never a moment to be lost or they would take off sous for wasted time.

‘I worked for the druggist and grocer one winter. I liked the smells though the work was hard. But I did it… and sometimes when there were many customers… I served in the shop. I loved the smell of that shop.
Parfum
… in the air. I learned too… how to weigh out the cinnamon, the sugar, the ground pepper… arsenic too. That was sold to the fashionable ladies. It did something for their complexions… But they must take care, they were always told. An overdose of that…
Mon Dieu,
it could give you more than a good complexion. It could give you a coffin and six feet of earth to cover you.’

Jeanne’s conversation—delivered half in French, half in English—was racy. It took me right back to my life in Paris—not only the days in the dark damp cellar but to the glorious time when Jeanne was in attendance, with my beautiful mother paying fleeting visits to my nursery and my wonderful Hessenfield coming even more rarely.

Jeanne brought a new atmosphere into Enderby. She showed me what the new hairdressing was like. She herself had a beautiful head of hair and had once or twice earned a few sous by being practised on by a hairdresser. She would laugh hilariously at the recollection. She had emerged bowed down by the weight of two or three pounds of flour and a considerable helping of pomade, looking like a lady of high fashion on the top and a poor flower seller everywhere else. But it was one way of earning a few sous although she had a hard task getting the stuff out of her hair.

But her greatest stroke of luck was with the druggist. She had done well there and was offered the opportunity to stay, which she did; and it was thus that she had been able to save enough money to make her journey to England.

It was amusing to hear her talk of the ladies of Paris. She would prance about the room in imitation of their elegance. They drank vinegar to make them thin while they took arsenic in the right doses to give them a delicately tinted skin. The druggist’s wife had aspired to be a lady. She had her arsenic at hand for her skin and she drank a pint of vinegar every day; her coiffure was a sight for wonder and at night the astonishing erection was wrapped in what looked like bandages, which made the whole contraption twice its normal size. And she would go to bed supporting false hair, flour and pomade on a kind of wooden pillow in which a place had been cut out for her neck to fit into, and which for all the discomfort gave the lady immense satisfaction.

Jeanne communicated her happiness to me and we would laugh and chat together for hours. Damaris was delighted to see us together. So Jeanne’s coming had been a very happy event.

One day a servant from Eversleigh Court rode over to Enderby with a special message from Arabella. A visitor had called on them and he came from the Field family of Hessenfield Castle in the north of England. It appeared that the present Lord Hessenfield was eager to make the acquaintance of his niece.

It was a moment of great excitement to me. Damaris, however, was a little apprehensive. I think she believed my father’s family would try to take me away from her.

We rode over to Eversleigh at once. Arabella was waiting for us, looking rather concerned.

‘This man is a sort of cousin of the present lord,’ she whispered to us when we arrived. ‘I gather he has been sent to see us.’

My heart was beating wildly with excitement as I went into the house. Arabella laid a hand on my arm. ‘He may make suggestions,’ she went on. ‘We shall have to discuss whatever it is all together. Don’t make any rash promises.’

I scarcely heard her. I could only think that I was going to discover more about my father’s family.

He was tall, like Hessenfield; his hair was light with a touch of red in it. He had the clear-cut features which I remembered my father had had; and he had very piercing blue eyes.

‘This is Clarissa,’ said Arabella, propelling me forward.

He came to me swiftly and took both my hands.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see the resemblance. You’re a Field, my dear Clarissa… isn’t it?’

‘Yes, that’s my name. What is yours?’

‘Ralph Field,’ he answered. ‘My uncle, Lord Hessenfield, knows of your existence and he wants to meet you.’

‘He is… my father’s brother?’

‘Exactly. He says it is not right that there should be such a close relationship and that you should not have met.’

‘Oh.’ I turned to look at Damaris.

Her face had puckered a little. I knew she was apprehensive because this man had come looking for me.

‘We feel that such a state of affairs should be rectified without delay,’ he went on. ‘You must want to meet your family.’