Escapade (12 page)

I suppose I could have spat in her eye anyway. And perhaps struck her in the mouth with a Meissen snuffbox. Both notions were enormously tempting. I could have left her outstretched on the floor like a beached whale, packed my luggage, begged a ride down to the railway station, caught the first train back to London.

But I remembered the months I had spent without employment, the cramped cold meals in my tiny room, the hunger and the humiliations and the murderous London solitude that scorches the soul.

Thus calculation doth make cowards of us all.

I said nothing to the Allardyce. She, for several long seconds, said nothing to me. For my part, I was too proud to beg for my position; and yet, despite my pride, too craven to throw it in her face. She, I think, was deliberately prolonging the moment, to impress upon us both the dimensions of her power.

‘I am, however,’ she said at last, ‘and with quite a few misgivings, going to give you one more chance. I am going to make allowances for your youth and your obvious ignorance. But I warn you. If you do not do as I say, from this moment on, you will be dismissed immediately. And I shall see to it that no one of decent family has anything further to do with you. You do understand me?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

She narrowed her spitless eyes and pursed her unbruised mouth. ‘It is customary,’ she said, ‘when someone has been good enough to show us a kindness, that we thank them for it.’

This too? I thought.

‘Thank you, Mrs Allardyce,’ I said, and privately I wondered how much spittle I could accumulate over the course of a year.

But the Allardyce was not finished with me, not yet. ‘There will be no more nonsense about ghosts,’ she said. ‘Your behaviour last night was inexcusable. And your treatment of Sir David was particularly offensive. You will apologize to him as soon as possible.’

Earlier this morning, in the midst of my performance, Sir David Merridale had pretended to comfort me by stroking me in a manner that was designed less to calm my nerves—Evy, I know this—than to arouse his own. I had been rude to him, yes; but the man had taken deliberate advantage of my distress. If the Allardyce had sat up all night contriving one single act which would disgust and enrage me, it would have been exactly this, my apologizing to him.

But I swallowed my pride, the few wretched shreds of it that remained, and I nodded. Mrs Applewhite, that staunch believer in principle, would have retched.

‘Very well,’ the Allardyce said. ‘You may go and dress.’

Breakfast was not quite the torment I had anticipated. I had been dreading it: confronting in daylight the people who had witnessed my lamp-lit hysteria. If not for the Allardyce, however, I believe that no one would have said a word. Even Mrs Corneille acted as though it never happened, despite my having spent a shaky half-hour in her room. She merely smiled at me pleasantly, and nodded in my direction.

Sir David smiled his ironic, knowing smile at me, but Sir David is forever smiling his ironic, knowing smile at me.

Mr Houdini and his secretary, Mr Beaumont, incidentally, never arrived. Despite their legendary get-up-and-go, Americans evidently prefer to lie-down-and-stay.

We ate in the conservatory, an airy room with a view of the lawns and, below us, the formal garden. The meal was an informal affair; we helped ourselves to eggs, bacon, kidneys, etc., from silver chafing-dishes on the sideboard.

I wasn’t hungry—those shreds of pride had caught in my throat and I could swallow very little else. I said nothing. Afterward, the Allardyce, her face and her good humour restored, talked at length about a mindless musical comedy to which she had towed me the month before. Lord Robert waxed ecstatic about some new motor bicycle he had purchased.

The Honourable Cecily surprised me by turning in my direction and asking me if I rode. Caught off guard, flustered, I could only reply, like a perfect idiot, ‘A motor bicycle, you mean?’ She smiled sweetly and said, ‘No, no. Do you
ride
?" 

I said that I once had, with great pleasure, but not for many years. She surprised me once again by offering me her own horse. ‘But I’ve no proper riding clothes,’ I said.

She shrugged lightly, and lightly glanced over my drab cotton frock. ‘My cousin left hers here. They’d fit you, I expect.’

Surprised by this unexpected generosity, and wondering what had prompted it, I nearly stammered again. ‘That’s extremely kind of you,’ I managed to say. ‘Yes, then. Thank you. I’d love to. If you’re quite sure you don’t mind?’

‘Not at all,’ she said in her plummy tones.

The Allardyce spoke.

‘Jane, dear,’ she said sweetly, ‘I don’t
really
feel that riding is a good idea. After all that excitement last night, I shouldn’t want you to
tire
yourself.’

Beneath this feigned concern, of course, was a determination to demonstrate her authority anew by refusing me something which I clearly desired. I felt anger wash through me, and then caution, and then shame, and I looked down at my plate without seeing it.

‘Eh?’ said Lord Robert. ‘Which excitement is that?’

‘Oh, you didn’t know?’ brightly said the Allardyce. ‘Poor Jane had a
frightful
nightmare last night. She
persuaded
herself that she’d seen your famous ghost, and she felt
compelled
, poor dear, to wake up everyone within earshot.’

I looked at Lord Robert and saw that he was staring at me. He had gone as pale as a—well, he had gone quite a deadly shade of pale, Evy. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again and said to me, nearly in a whisper, “You saw Lord Reginald?” He cleared his throat.

I was a bit surprised at his reaction and I could only stutter, ‘I, no, Lord Robert, I—’

‘Robert, dear,’ said Lady Purleigh, smiling up at him from the

opposite end of the table. ‘It was a nightmare. Only that.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A nightmare. I’m very sorry, Lord Purleigh, that I disturbed your guests.’ My voice was raspy and not at all my own.

Mrs Corneille sat across from me, and she was staring at the Allardyce, her lips compressed. To her left sat Dr Auerbach, the psychoanalyst, who was watching me with his eyes wide in psychiatric interest behind his pince-nez spectacles.

The skin of my face was hot again, and as taut as a sausage casing.

Lord Robert’s face had gone from white back to its usual brick red, and suddenly he ginned at me. ‘A nightmare. Well, ’course, it was a nightmare. ’Course it was. Hah hah. Nothing to be ashamed of. Happens to the best of us, eh? Don’t give it another thought.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Riding, that’s the ticket. Best thing in the world for you. Good fresh air. Healthy exercise. You take Cecily’s horse, like she says. Damn good idea, Cecily.’

He turned to the Allardyce. ‘Best thing in the world for her, Marjorie, trust me.’

Coming from her host, this was for the Allardyce less a suggestion than a command. Blinking her eyelids, she smiled sweetly. ‘Well, of
course
, Robert. If you really
think
so.’

Is it possible, do you think, that she is secretly a creature from some other world, Mars or Venus, obliged to disguise her true feelings in order to masquerade as a creature of this one?

Said Cecily, ‘She could take Storm for a run while we all go into the village.’

And Mrs Corneille, bless her, said, ‘But perhaps Jane would enjoy a trip into the village. Wouldn’t you like to come with us, Jane?’

‘I would, yes,’ I said. ‘But some other time? If I could? If you don’t mind, I’d really love to go riding.’

She smiled beneath those finely arched eyebrows of hers. ‘As you like.’

‘Best thing for you,’ said Lord Robert. ‘Cecily, take Miss Turner upstairs, why don’t you, and fit her out, eh?’

I glanced around the table. Sir David was still smiling knowingly. Dr Auerbach was still eyeing me with professional curiosity.

As I left with Cecily, enormously relieved to be going, another thought occurred to me: it is quite rude not to remove one’s back from the room when people are about to discuss one behind it.

Cecily has her own suite in the West Wing of the manor, a small sitting room and a boudoir with an attached dressing room. Everything everywhere was perfect, of course, and French—the mahogany armoire, the elegant Empire bed, the Louis XIV chairs in crimson velvet. And the clothes crowding her cupboards, the silk and satin and velvet and lace and ... etc. Envy is so tiresome, don’t you think?

Cecily lay on an upholstered camelback sofa in the sitting room, leafing through a
Vogue
magazine, while her maid, Constance, helped me locate the cousin’s clothes. They smelled faintly of Chanel (of course) and they fitted me really rather well, I must say. When I looked into the tall looking glass in the dressing room, I was surprised and absurdly pleased. The cut of the jacket with its trimly tucked sides was immensely flattering, minimizing that awful chest of mine and emphasizing my waist, which is, no matter how currently unfashionable, one of the few decent features I possess. (And
please
don’t tell me otherwise.) I spent, I confess, a moment or two swirling like a dervish before the glass, admiring my fatuous smiling self over my shoulder.

When I returned to the sitting room, carrying the riding crop in one hand and the bowler in my other, Cecily closed the magazine and languidly laid it on the coffee table. She looked me over and frowned, as though for some reason displeased.

I stopped walking. ‘Is something wrong?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’ Lightly, athletically, she swung her long legs off the sofa and stood. She was wearing a dress of cream-coloured linen, simple but elegant, with short sleeves and a low waist and a hem that fell to just beneath her pert perfect knees. Opalescent silk stockings, also, and beige leather pumps. She looked smashing, as always.

She removed a cigarette from a black lacquered Chinese box on the coffee table and put it between her lips. She looked over at me again. ‘It suits you,’ she said. ‘The jacket.’ With a small gold lighter she lighted her cigarette.

‘Do you really think so?’

‘Yes,’ she said, exhaling smoke. ‘You’re quite the dark horse, aren’t you.’

‘Excuse me?’ I said.

She merely smiled her superior smile and shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘It’s only that you seem so much ... I don’t know, really...
healthier
in that outfit.’

Fatter, I assumed she meant; and perhaps I frowned.

But she smiled again, less rigidly. ‘I mean to say, she said, that you do look really quite lovely.’

I thought that was very sweet of her, and I thanked her: flushing, of course, like a schoolgirl.

Together we marched from her room through several corridors and down several stairways and through several more corridors until we arrived, rather breathless, at the Great Hall, where the going-to-town contingent had assembled: Lady Purleigh, Mrs Corneille, Dr Auerbach, and Sir David. Lady Purleigh said something gracious about me and my plundered finery, and again I blushed and gushed; very becomingly, I’m sure. And then, as the others began to trickle out into the sunshine, the Allardyce towed me aside and growled, under her minty breath, ‘Time for your apologies, young lady.’

She wheeled her bulk around and whinnied, ‘Oh, Sir
David
? May we speak with you for just a
moment
, please?’

Sir David turned and then strolled over to us, smiling that odious ironic smile.

‘Sir David,’ mooed the Allardyce, ‘Jane has something most important she wishes to say to you.’ She smiled at me sweetly: once again attempting, and with the same crashing lack of success, to impersonate a human being. ‘Now don’t
overtire
yourself today, dear,’ she said. And then she waddled off, leaving me alone with my bowler and my riding crop and Sir David. I felt rather as a sacrificial goat must feel when it has been staked out amidst the brambles, beneath the roaring sun.

‘I must say, Jane,’ said Sir David, ‘you look ravishing in that

outfit.’ He smiled, as though ravishing, word and deed, had been much on his mind of late.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘A fine riding crop,’ he said, stroking his moustache. ‘May I see it?’

I gave it to him. He thwacked it very lightly against the palm of his left hand, then looked up at me knowingly. ‘Nice spring to it. Stiff and yet supple.’

I felt the skin of my face begin to stiffen and singe. ‘I am sure it will prove adequate,’ I said.

He smiled at my blush; my blush deepened; his smile widened. ‘Oh, I’m quite sure it will,’ he said, tapping the crop rhythmically against his palm. ‘You had something to say to me?’

‘Yes. I wanted to apologize for my behaviour of last night. I was rude.’

There. It was done. In a year’s time, the Allardyce would be richer by half a pint of spittle.

Still smiling, still tapping the crop, he said, ‘You’ve ridden before, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d have thought so. You’ve a splendid seat, I fancy.’

And then, his glance holding mine, his eyebrow raised speculatively, he lowered the crop to my side and moved it, in a lickerish, leathery caress, up along my hip.

I was so startled that I merely stood there.

He took that as acceptance: he stepped forward, his lips still smiling, but parting now. I slapped him full across the face, as hard as I could.

I suspect that I was as surprised by this as he was. And he was stunned. His head snapped up and his face went white. And it went wicked, Evy: his eyes narrowed to dark shining slits and his thick lips snapped back from his teeth. And then, backhanded, so swiftly I could hear it hiss, he raised the riding crop.

(to be continued)

"LET ME SEE,” said Lord Bob, “if I understand you.”

We were in his study, a large room on the ground floor. It smelled of new flowers and old money. It had probably always smelled of old money, but the smell of flowers came from a tall vase of red roses on Lord Bob’s desk. The desk was big enough to make the vase look like a tiny skiff floating on a lake of cherry-wood.

The Great Man and I were sitting in red padded leather chairs studded with brass tacks. On the dark paneled walls hung framed etchings of elegant hunting dogs. Beyond the casement window hung a postcard view of green grass and distant trees.