Eden Falls (36 page)

‘Good Lord!’ Archie shouted. ‘Why would the gel do that?’

Peregrine, full of eggs and toasted brioche, sat back in his chair and laced his fingers across the swollen expanse of his stomach. ‘It’s what these suffragettes do, Papa,’ he shouted. ‘Ups the ante, y’see. Martyrs to the cause.’

‘I believe Henry just wants to come home,’ said Isabella. ‘Toby says she’s not angry any more, just desperately unhappy.’

‘Well, put it how you will, she’s a damned embarrassment to the family and I’m jolly glad she’s not a Partington,’ Perry said. Amandine swelled with wifely pride and Isabella, who had always found it easy to cry, fought the onset of tears because Peregrine was not worthy. ‘I’m jolly glad she’s not a Partington too,’ she said passionately, driven not so much by loyalty to Henrietta as loathing for Peregrine. ‘Because then you’d be my actual brother, and that would be more embarrassing than anything Henrietta has done.’

Ulrich laughed. Peregrine stood up.

‘Outrageous,’ he said. ‘I will not be insulted at my father’s table.’

Clarissa could not abide bad manners, whatever provocation may have preceded them. ‘Please sit down, Peregrine,’ she said evenly. ‘Isabella, you must apologise at once.’

Isabella held her tongue. She looked at Ulrich, who offered a smile of warm encouragement and then spoke calmly into the hostile silence.

‘From what I understand, those campaigners for women’s suffrage who have broken the law are political prisoners and deserve to be treated differently – more respectfully, one might say – from common criminals. Lady Henrietta has been treated abysmally by the judicial system, and I think she is quite justified in taking this latest course of action. If she were my sister, I should be proud.’

Ulrich had never met Henrietta, and had only a scant understanding of the details – it was not something Isabella wished to discuss – but he spoke with the authority of a barrister, although he was no such thing. Somehow, he had bridged the chasm that had opened between Clarissa’s demand for an apology and Isabella’s unspoken yet evident refusal to oblige; he had fogged the issue, and with great éclat. Isabella pressed a hand against her heart, for she thought it might burst. That she deeply resented her older sister’s attention-hogging conduct was, for now, neither here nor there. Ulrich had managed to confer nobility upon Henrietta’s actions, and by so doing had got Isabella off the hook. She wondered if anyone had ever loved another human being so entirely as she loved Ulrich von Hechingen.

Peregrine, purple faced, had nevertheless reclaimed his seat. The wrong done to him had not been righted; his indignant fury had not been assuaged. However, a platter of crêpes Suzette
had been carried into the dining room, and their buttery fragrance immediately distracted him from his ire.

Aunt Liese clapped her hands gleefully and turned to Clarissa with eyes lit by a childlike excitement. ‘Well!’ she said. ‘I’m sure even your naughty daughter would be tempted by these.’

It was such a spectacularly silly thing to say. Clarissa, from ingrained politeness, gave the older lady a gracious smile, but she was much displeased. She remained to be convinced that this family was entirely suitable. In the pages of the
Almanach de Gotha
she had followed the labyrinthine roots and branches of the German imperial family to its further-flung scions, and while the connection with the von Hechingens could certainly be verified, it was tenuous indeed. No, she thought now; Isabella’s future is far from settled. She enjoyed a frisson of satisfaction that this might very well be the last time the Prussians dined with the Plymouths.

‘Now then young man,’ Archie bellowed in the direction of Ulrich. ‘Tell me, do you ride? We have a couple of absolute top-notch hacks in our stables, right here in London. Take one or other of ’em out for a canter any time you like, eh?’

He smiled broadly at his own largesse. His deafness inured him to every nuance at the dining table, and in particular chilly disapprobation. This was his misfortune. Unbeknownst to Archie, his wife’s grievances against him were stacking up into teetering piles, like the unpaid bills of a bankrupt tradesman.

On her third day of hunger strike, Henrietta was moved once again from prison to a locked single room in the Highgate Hill Infirmary. There, her arms were tied to the bedposts and a nurse pinched her nose closed while another pushed the sloppy constituents of cottage pie into her gasping, open mouth. Henrietta closed her eyes and her mind, and swallowed nothing. After fifteen minutes of pitched battle the nurses left her to stew in her own juice, her face and chest covered in mince and mash, her wrists still tied painfully tightly to the iron bars of the bedstead.

She felt lightheaded with victory.

J
ennifer Hathersage might be poor, thought Anna, but she shared no other characteristics with a church mouse. She was confident and garrulous, and their meeting in the Antique Room at the Slade was constantly interrupted by cheerful greetings from, or merry conversations with, a stream of other students, both male and female. She was tall and altogether bony, with wrists that jutted out from the sleeves of her smock and a long, rather sharp nose. She wasn’t remotely attractive in any conventional sense – or any sense at all, in fact – but by sheer force of personality she seemed to have overcome her obvious physical disadvantages. Anna, there to offer her paid, and rather prestigious, employment, felt a little superfluous and when Jennifer accepted the job, she did it with a certain amount of condescension, as if the favour was hers, not Anna’s, to bestow.

Her portfolio was excellent, though, and later, as Anna walked out on to Gower Street, she considered the irrefutable fact that each of the young artists she employed were, technically speaking, more talented than she. Both of them were being expertly tutored in the craft that she, without really thinking much about it, had turned into a profession when she painted a beach house on Thea Hoyland’s bedroom wall. And then, just as this thought passed through Anna’s mind, there was a tap on her shoulder and she turned to find Thea herself in the flesh, standing right before her, smiling broadly. ‘Thought it was you,’ she said and Anna jumped: actually jumped. Thea laughed.

‘Sorry, did I spook you?’ she said. ‘I must look a fright today.’

‘I just conjured you out of thin air,’ Anna said. ‘I thought of you, and there you were,
pouf
!’

‘Sorry to disappoint, but I arrived here the usual way, by car. Gee, it’s good to see you!’

She said this so warmly, so convincingly, that Anna felt a wash of fondness for this woman who, after all, was more former client than friend.

‘What are you up to?’ Thea asked. ‘I saw you coming out of the Slade and I yelled at Charlson to stop so I could catch you.’

‘Oh well, yes, I had things to do: a new artist to hire, you know.’ Anna gesticulated vaguely backwards, to the entrance to the art school.

‘And are you through?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Through. Finished. Free.’

‘Oh, I see, yes. I’m heading for Regent’s Park,’ Anna said, which was true; she had thought of a stroll in the sun.

‘No, come with me,’ Thea said, which seemed to be an order, not an invitation.

‘To?’

‘Luncheon at Fulton House. We’re very glum, with Henry locked away still. We need variety.’

Anna frowned. ‘Is Lady Henrietta still in prison?’ she said. ‘I thought she—’

‘Oh boy, are you out of date.’ Thea looped an arm through Anna’s and turned her round so that Anna noticed, then, the Rolls-Royce waiting a little way down the street. It looked incongruous in the plain uniformity of Gower Street: sleek and pale against the sooty brick of the terraced buildings. Thea, still talking, propelled her towards the motorcar and Anna, who had neither agreed nor disagreed to the scheme, found herself climbing in and settling on the leather seat. Inside, the car smelled of beeswax and Thea’s cologne. The driver, immaculate in his Hoyland livery, sat straight-backed and awaited instructions.

‘Thank you Charlson, home we go,’ Thea said merrily, and then turned to Anna. ‘So, poor Henry gets another three months in that vile institution, which everyone agrees is far too harsh a punishment for throwing a silly brick, and now she’s taken matters into her own hands and stopped eating.’

‘Stopped eating?’

‘Hunger strike,’ Thea said in a comically gothic voice laced with doom.

‘Oh, how dreadful.’

‘You see, they let out Marion Wallace Dunlop after four days when she stopped eating, so unless Mr Asquith wants Henry to actually die, he must release her too. That’s the plan.’

The motorcar, moving smoothly through the streets of Bloomsbury, drew attention from passers-by and Anna was glad that Amos couldn’t see her, perched on the soft leather upholstery with the Countess of Netherwood; he would have demanded explanations, justification. The air between them would have been thick with reproof. Anna said, ‘And how long has she been refusing food?’

Thea counted on her fingers. ‘Saturday, Sunday, Monday – three,’ she said. ‘Which is nothing, really. I swear I’ve gone without food for longer, without even meaning to.’ She laughed, though Anna looked concerned.

‘Have you visited?’

‘Oh, sure, but I prefer to send Toby. He’s better than I am at that sort of thing.’ She looked away, out of the window. ‘Gosh, London is so drab,’ she said, alighting, butterfly-like, on a new topic. ‘I’m longing, now, for the regatta.’ She looked at Anna again. ‘It’s so important, isn’t it, to ring the changes? I can’t bear to be stuck in one place for too long.’

This sounded shallow, self-absorbed. Anna didn’t answer.

‘Do you sail?’ Thea asked.

‘No.’

‘Me either: well, not for years. But we should all try these things. I did a bit of boating as a girl and of course I sailed here from New York, but frankly those liners are so huge that I might have been in a hotel for three weeks for all I saw of the water.’

Anna said, ‘Well I sailed here too, for that matter, on a steam ship. My first husband and I were escaping persecution.’ It was a kind of reprimand, but it was too hidden, too oblique, to hit its mark. Thea widened her eyes. ‘Golly,’ she said. ‘That sounds thrilling. Do tell.’

‘Not now,’ Anna said, regretting her impulse; regretting, too, the earlier passivity that had put her here in the first place. Thea’s insouciance was suddenly unappealing. ‘And look,’ Anna said, shunting forwards on the seat of the car as if she might jump out there and then, ‘I think I should go home, to Bedford Square. I have rather a lot to do.’

Thea’s face fell. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Lucky old you. I have absolutely nothing at all to do.’

As problems went, this hardly merited sympathy. Still, there was something so wistful about the way she looked and spoke that Anna softened, but only fractionally.

‘Then let’s go and visit Lady Henrietta,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see her, see how she is.’

Thea sighed and pulled a face. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

‘But you can’t just waltz in, you know.’

‘Certainly we can’t, if we don’t go.’

‘I mean, there’s a visiting hour, and it isn’t now.’

‘Never mind, we can deal with that.’

‘But…’ Thea, used to pleasing herself, cast about for another objection, more out of habit than conviction. ‘I’m expected back,’ she said, but half-heartedly, because the truth was no one ever expected Thea until they saw her walk through the door. She looked at Anna, whose expression – determined, disapproving, implacable – gave her no cause for optimism.

‘Charlson,’ Thea said resignedly. ‘About turn.’

The cricket pitch at the back of the miners’ welfare was as hard as stone after a few weeks of sun, and the wicket was brown, not green. Amos spent hours here; it was less lonely than home and, anyway, he loved the weight of the leather ball in his hand and the supreme satisfaction of letting it fly at its target. They had practice nets and Amos found that there was usually someone around who was willing to face a few overs. Before Sam had brought him into the fold, Amos hadn’t played cricket for years. Now, this summer, he’d begun to feel that this was one of the principal reasons he had been placed on earth. His body was made for it: his body, and the effect upon it of the years he’d spent hacking coal out of its seam. His shoulders and arms were strong, his legs powerful. He had balance and timing, accuracy and speed, and he had a fierce ambition to hone this natural ability into perfectly consistent genius. He was a formidable foe with a ball cupped in his hand, and he took no prisoners. When Amos bowled, the batsman either went for the shot or ducked; Lofty Vickers, in the practice crease, chose the latter option now.

‘Bloody Nora, Amos, I’m on t’same team as thee!’ He bent to pick up the ball, which lolled in the folds of the net, devoid of its killer power.

‘There’ll be nowt Wharnecliffe can show you that you ’aven’t already seen,’ Amos said. ‘They can do their worst come Sat’day – you’ll be ready for ’em, Lofty.’

‘Aye, or dead,’ Lofty said. ‘I should bat in a bloody pit ’elmet.’ He tossed the ball back to Amos, who spat on it and rubbed it hard on the cloth of his trousers. He walked backwards, slowly, watching the batsman through narrowed eyes.

‘Easy,’ Lofty said. ‘You don’t want my death on yer conscience.’

Amos stopped, drew up his shoulders, rocked back on one heel, then took off at full tilt towards the wicket, bringing back his right arm at the precise moment, which was more about instinct than technique. He sent a yorker, just because he could, and because he knew that if he judged it right, Lofty would dance out of the way of the ball and the bails would fly.

‘Out!’

This was Sam Bamford, ambling past the back of the nets, heading for the welfare hall, which on match days they called the pavilion. He raised a hand in salute to his pace man, his demon bowler. Amos, waiting for Lofty to replace the bails and regain his nerve, considered the possibilities for his next delivery. He considered, too, the fact that, if it was practical and within his power, this was how he would live his days: time and again, outfoxing a batsman with a well-aimed cricket ball.