Eden Falls (6 page)

I
f he was entirely honest, Tobias was no more at home at Portsmouth docks than he was in one of his colliery yards. He felt the same sense of dislocation, the same fundamental lack of interest, as he did when he stood in the shadow of the winding gear, feigning interest in a safety report or the monthly productivity figures from one or another of his pit deputies. It rattled him considerably that Thea was right: a new motorcar would have set his pulse racing, be there ever so many – and most of them still in mint condition – already parked in the garages of Netherwood Hall. It rattled him, too, that Thea could still rattle him. He was trying to achieve immunity from her repertoire of chilly barbs; she was sharper than he was: funnier, cleverer. He felt like the underdog in a sparring contest. Outclassed, unable to equal her in mental acuity, he aspired instead to indifference. Thus far, he hadn’t attained it.

‘Watch your back, guvnor. Coming through.’

Behind him a burly stevedore, bearing an implausible load of timber on each shoulder, wove a path around the earl and along the crowded wharf. There was such purpose and industry here that Tobias felt like an obstruction. He tried to look as though he belonged, and gazed out past the crowded docks to the harbour mouth itself, the passage of water beyond which lay the open sea and the rest of the world. The sight, Tobias was sure, would stir many a man’s imagination, but he remained unmoved. He had not the slightest interest in seamanship; he possessed none, and believed he had no urge to acquire it. The sea, through his eyes, looked grey and uninviting, and in his experience, the greater the expanse of it, the smaller and lonelier one felt.

‘And again, sir.’ It was the same docker, walking towards him now, with great loops of thick rope adorning his person. It was as if he intended to taunt. Tobias held his ground, affecting a nonchalant stance. He groped for his cigarette case; a man who was smoking always looked more comfortable, more gainfully occupied, than a man who wasn’t. He took a drag, blew the smoke out through his nostrils, checked his fob: half past two, give or take. Where the devil was this Carruthers fellow, then? Just behind him, as it happened. He spoke, startling Tobias, who jumped in alarm and dropped his cigarette.

‘Lord Netherwood, Gordon Carruthers – oh, I do apologise…’ He bent down to retrieve the cigarette from the cobbles, then, handling it gingerly, passed it to Tobias. It had suffered on its journey, but it seemed rude to discard it when the chap had taken the trouble to pick it up, so Tobias took it, thinking all the while what a frightful hash they were making of things, the Earl of Netherwood and Gordon Carruthers, master boat builder. They shook hands.

‘Had a good look about?’ asked Mr Carruthers brightly. He was a spruce little man in a jaunty nautical get-up: all navy blue serge and brass buttons.

‘Not really,’ said Tobias. ‘Not at all, actually. Not entirely my thing, boats.’

Only after he’d spoken did he realise the insensitivity of his remark, but Carruthers turned out to be one of those fellows who asked a question but didn’t hear the answer. He smiled broadly and said, ‘Splendid. HMS
Warrior
across the water there, poor old thing; not what she used to be. Top of the range warship middle of last century, then obsolete before ten years was up, y’know.’

He set off at almost a canter as he talked, and Tobias sauntered behind him, smoking the damp cigarette and looking – he hoped – moderately interested.

‘That’s the trouble with shipbuilding. Advancements all the time. Not so bad for us, but the poor old Royal Navy’s always on the hop, keeping one step ahead of the kaiser.’ He looked round at Tobias. ‘Have you seen
Dreadnought
?’

Tobias looked at him, baffled.

‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

‘HMS
Dreadnought
. Battleship. Fastest in the world on account of her steam turbines. Have you seen her?’

‘No, why – have you lost her?’ Tobias said, and laughed.

‘Ha!’ said Mr Carruthers, a little uncertainly. He fell silent for a moment, and Tobias said, ‘Do you drive a motorcar, Mr Carruthers? I used to favour a Daimler, but the new one’s a Rolls-Royce. Silver Ghost. Best car in the world, bar none.’

He smiled. A taste of his own medicine, he thought. Then Mr Carruthers stopped by the long, sleek navy blue hull of a two-hundred-foot yacht whose masts towered majestically in the blue Portsmouth sky and said, ‘Here we are. Isn’t she a beauty?’ and Tobias was silenced. Silenced, and humbled.

Tobias was spending that night at Denbigh Court, and he desperately underestimated the length of the journey, turning up so late that there was a sense of crisis about his arrival, like a doctor called in the night or an intruder caught red-handed. He had pulled on the bell rope fully five hours after the time he had given them; everyone had long retired, assuming that his plans had changed. His mother’s husband, the Duke of Plymouth, received him in pyjamas and a paisley dressing gown, but the duchess had been hastily buttoned back into her gown by Flytton – the maid having been dragged, herself, from deep sleep – and was now torn between joy at seeing her best beloved eldest son and profound irritation at the disruption. Tobias was characteristically oblivious. He was all animation as he drank his glass of claret and wolfed his Welsh rarebit, and all he could talk of was his new yacht.

‘You should have sailed here, darling,’ said his mother. She stifled a yawn, conspicuously. ‘Perhaps, then, you might have arrived at a more sociable hour.’

He grinned at her. ‘Sail? Not I,’ he said. ‘Don’t know my anchor from my elbow.’

‘Can’t trust the water if you haven’t grown up by it,’ said the duke. He wagged a knowing forefinger at Tobias. ‘Can’t always trust the damn crew, either. I come from a long line of naval men, of course, but I’m a cavalryman myself. Put me in the saddle and I’ll give anyone a run for their money.’

‘Once upon a time, perhaps, Archie,’ said the duchess. He was older than her by fifteen years and she never let him forget it. ‘Now, I should say you’re more of a steady plodder.’

He smiled vaguely, but Tobias thought the old boy looked a little sad.

‘Egypt, wasn’t it, Archie? The last campaign?’

The duke’s face brightened. ‘Tel-el-Kebir,’ he said, sitting up in his wing chair. ‘Dawn attack on Arabi Pasha’s lot, then a thirty-nine-mile dash back to Cairo to put the Khedive back on the throne. More claret?’

‘Oh, let’s not meander back to Egypt, Archie,’ said the duchess. ‘So pointless, and so dull. What news of Henrietta, Toby? Is she still bringing the family name into disrepute? Throwing eggs at Mr Asquith? Mining for coal?’

Tobias laughed. ‘She’s a brick, Ma. Steady hand on the tiller, that’s Henry. She keeps an eye on the bailiff’s accounts and walks the estate twice a week with Mr Arkwright. If she occasionally disrupts public order … well, everyone needs diversion of one kind or another.’

‘Dickie wrote,’ his mother said. ‘From Verona this time, though he’s based on the Italian Riviera, I believe. I do think it odd, don’t you?’

‘What, the Italian Riviera?’

‘No. Well, yes. I mean the fact that your brother seems to prefer Italy to England.’

She said this as if he preferred cold tripe to hot buttered toast.

‘Climate’s marvellous, of course,’ said the duke, venturing an opinion. His wife glared at him and he shrank back in his seat.

‘I think Dickie feels at a bit of a loss in England,’ Tobias said. Dickie Hoyland, Tobias’s younger brother, had bravely borne the disadvantage of being a second son until a proposal of marriage had been coldly rejected for lack of a title. The resulting bout of heartbreak had sent him to the Continent three years previously and he was yet to return. ‘In Italy, he has cachet.’

His mother wrinkled her small nose, as if she doubted this were possible. ‘And Dorothea?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t she want to travel with you? Such a pity.’

This was disingenuousness of the highest degree, thought Tobias. His mother’s loathing of his wife was immutable, and the one thing that made him feel protective towards Thea these days.

‘Thea’s in Yorkshire, having her portrait painted,’ Tobias said, and regretted it at once. His mother arched a brow.

‘By whom?’

‘American chap, Eugene Stiller. Comes highly recommended.’

She smiled ruefully.

‘One worries for her,’ she said. ‘That chin.’

‘Oh tosh, Ma. Thea’s considered very beautiful among our set. She has the modern look.’

‘Really? I would have thought a recessive chin could never be in vogue.’

‘Cracking filly,’ said the duke recklessly. ‘Can’t half dance.’

The icy silence following his remark was broken by the sound of someone rushing pell-mell along the first floor landing and down the stairs. The door of the drawing room burst open and there stood Isabella. Her face was flushed from sleep and she was barefoot. The ribbons of her nightdress were untied, and her charming décolletage artlessly exposed. She had blue cotton rags tied and twisted all over her head, performing – no doubt – some mysterious feminine function, the effects of which would only be seen tomorrow. She was seventeen years old and as lovely as her mother had once been, but kinder. Her mother’s face and her father’s heart, thought Tobias. He stood and she hurled herself across the room at him.

‘Tobes,’ she said. ‘Tobes.’ She hugged him, hanging about his neck, and it struck him that it was a long time since Thea had greeted him with anything approaching this sort of warmth; Thea, or anyone else for that matter. The love in his life these days was the kind he had to pay for, in one way or another.

‘Isabella!’ said the duchess, speaking sharply. ‘Put Toby down and fasten your nightgown. You’re behaving like a child.’

Isabella stepped away from her brother, though she still held his hands in hers. He saw her so rarely since their mother had remarried; she had gone away to Devon three years ago, and each time he had seen her since some improvement in her appearance seemed to have taken place, so that his pretty little sister was now possessed of the sort of head-turning, show-stopping looks that blessed only a handful of girls in each successive generation. She was coming out this summer. London had better brace itself.

‘Izzy,’ he said. ‘Look at you.’

She widened her eyes at him.

‘How’s the boat?’

‘Magnificent. It’s a yacht, y’know, not a rowing boat.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘She. You have to say she, not it. Not sure. Undecided.’

‘Call it Dorothea,’ said Isabella. ‘Or Thea. But that seems a bit short.’

‘I say,’ said the duke, suddenly seeing a way out of the dog house, ‘what about Clarissa, after your mother?’

The duchess gave a coy squeak of protest, but looked immensely pleased. Tobias thought what an almighty nail it would be in the coffin of his marriage if he named the yacht for his mother. Dorothea wouldn’t do, though. Only his mother ever used it, and then only to wound. And yet, he was in no mood to be painting ‘Thea’ on the side of his yacht either; these honours had to be earned. He felt backed into a corner.

‘Lady Isabella,’ he said, suddenly inspired. ‘How would that be?’

The duchess never rose for breakfast – never had, even when the king had been a guest at Netherwood – and the duke was with his nurse, who came three times a week to manipulate his leg joints, so Isabella and Tobias had the dining room to themselves. He was dissecting a kipper; she was dipping fingers of toast into a soft-boiled egg and pleading with her brother to take her to Cowes. He would see, he said, but it would be up to Mama in the end.

‘Oh Tobes, that’s such a tedious, adult response,’ she said.

‘I am, I’m sorry to say, a tedious adult.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re an irresponsible gadabout. Everyone says so.’

‘Do they? Splendid. I was concerned that my reputation was on the wane.’

‘I should so love to come, though.’ She cupped her charming chin in her hands and fixed her wide blue eyes upon him. Last night’s rags had produced a mass of soft curls that dropped on to her shoulders and made her look very beguiling. She’d done it for fun, she said; for something to do. This evening she would straighten them out again. ‘It’s what passes for entertainment at Denbigh Court,’ she had said, affecting resignation to her dismal fate.

‘Archie and Mama will be going to Cowes, darling. Archie’s from a long line of naval men. He told me so himself.’

‘Yes, but with you and Thea I might actually enjoy myself,’ she said, and Tobias grinned. ‘When do you go to Park Lane?’ he asked.

She set about her egg again, mining the shell with a tiny spoon for the remains of the white. ‘We’re obliged to wait until Perry and Amandine return from Marienbad,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why. Everyone’ll be up by the time we trickle along.’

‘Is Perry as fat as ever?’

‘Fatter. It’s blamed on his thyroid gland, but I’ve tried to share afternoon tea with him at the Savoy, so I know better. Marienbad’s waters are miraculous, I hear, but there’s nothing they could possibly do for Perry.’

Tobias laughed. Peregrine Partington, the Marquess of Hampden, heir to the dukedom and the Plymouth estate, was the sort of man who blamed his ailments on everything but his own behaviour. Amandine, his wife, was a vapid creature whose name, Isabella assured Tobias, was absolutely the most interesting thing about her. It meant ‘she who must be loved’, and Isabella said it was just as well she came with the instruction.

‘Poor you. Not much company, is it?’

Isabella grimaced and rolled her eyes in answer.

‘End’s in sight,’ Tobias said. ‘You’ll be fighting off dashing young men with a stick by the end of June, let alone the end of the Season.’

‘I wish Daddy was alive,’ Isabella said out of the blue, and to his absolute shock Toby’s eyes filled with tears. His sister regarded him gravely across the table.

‘Could I come with you, to Cowes?’

Tobias felt, suddenly, the benign and interested presence of his father. Isabella had always been Teddy Hoyland’s darling; of all of them, she had felt his loss the most keenly. She had lost her greatest admirer, and the safe and steady flow of unconditional paternal affection. Now, thought Tobias, she had the Duke of Plymouth on one side and on the other the fat and foolish Perry Partington. Small wonder that Teddy felt a visitation was in order: he only ever returned – in Toby’s experience, at least – to prod his son into the correct course of action. Now, thinking of their father, imagining him listening, he said, ‘Of course, you can, Izzy. And I’ll tell you what…’ – he paused and smiled; she was all eager attention – ‘…I’ll take you back up to Netherwood with me when I leave tomorrow. How would that be? You can travel down to London with us in May.’