Good Hope Road: A Novel (5 page)

Turning off the ignition, Madeleine stepped from the car, holding the collar of her coat close against the chill. Her head tilted as she took in the house. She wore her hair sort of wavy in front and fastened at the nape of her neck, a rich, auburn knot, large as his fist.

He tried to read her expression, suddenly anxious for her to love this old, sprawling house as much as he did.

The front door opened. He could hear the slow scrape of the Major’s cane. ‘You must be Miss Scott.’

‘Do call me Madeleine,’ she replied, smiling.

‘What beautiful woodwork,’ Madeleine said, admiring the carvings in the front door.

The Major nodded stiffly, still formal and reticent as he pointed with his cane at the date inscribed above it.

‘1 September 1773,’ Madeleine read aloud, intrigued. ‘Has the house been in the family all the while?’

‘There’ve been Stonebridges in these parts since the town was founded.’ He cleared his throat, tapping his cane on the floor as if debating whether he should, before awkwardly offering her his arm. She was gracefully looping her hand through it with a ‘Do tell me more!’ as Jim loped downstairs. Their eyes met, and she smiled.

Gradually, the Major began to let down his guard. He told her about that first Stonebridge, responsible for the house and that date over the door. A seadog if ever there was one, he’d stumbled upon his true love late in life: these mountains. It had proved a lasting affair. Although Captain Stonebridge still left periodically for the sea, it was here that he returned each time. His great-grandson, the Major’s father, came out of the Civil War missing two fingers and afflicted with a violent case of wanderlust. He’d headed for Canada after the war, making his way across the Eastern Townships and the logging camps along the Laurentian, before joining a whaling ship off the West Coast.

‘Ocean air and salted spray,’ the Major said wryly, ‘tidal persuasions, passed on through blood.’

Jim watched bemused as his father, so long unaccustomed to playing the role of host, graciously offered to escort Madeleine on a tour of the downstairs floor. ‘My father was gone a long while,’ he continued. ‘When he returned, it was with a tiger skin that grew mould in the next spring thaw, that ivory tusk you see in the corner, velvet-lined boxes filled with whale teeth, porcelain place settings from Karlovy Vary, two wagonloads of books, and an army of cab inet makers and shipwrights on loan from a shipyard-owning friend.’

The men had set to work, expanding the original façade of the house, he explained, building upwards and behind. The symmetry of the original windows was maintained, but more were added and skylights introduced here and there. A library was built, fireplace mantels were carved from imported Italian marble, and brass hardware and claw-footed tubs were installed in the bathrooms upstairs. The Major pointed out the hem mirror installed along the fireplace in the formal parlour. ‘Women would check their skirts there,’ he said, ‘back when the Stonebridges threw all sorts of grand soirees and dances.’

‘Don’t you host dances here any more?’ Madeleine asked. She tapped the parquet floors with a foot, glancing mischievously at Jim. ‘These floors are so beautiful, they just beg to be waltzed upon.’

The Major stared at her white leather Mary Janes as she tapped her feet. ‘No,’ he said, his voice suddenly distant. ‘No, not any more.’ He removed her hand from his arm, a frozen expression on his face.

‘Major Stonebridge,’ Madeleine began, ‘I meant no—’

‘Jim, I’ve bored your guest enough with my ramblings,’ the Major interrupted. ‘Show her around the rest of the house – the library, perhaps.’ He limped stiffly from the room, the sound of his cane echoing on the parquet floors.

‘Whatever did I say?’ Madeleine said, bewildered, to Jim. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset him.’

Jim shrugged. ‘He just didn’t fancy a waltz with you,’ he said mock solemnly, trying to lighten the moment.

‘Oh, but I wasn’t . . . you
know
I wasn’t suggesting that he dance with me!’

‘It was nothing you said.’ Jim paused, his face tightening as he searched for the right words. He shook his head. ‘Nothing that you did.’ He opened the door to the library. ‘Here, what would you like to see first? The family hoard of whale teeth, or Captain Stonebridge’s journal?’

‘Why don’t you have dances here any more?’

‘We used to, when I was little. Things changed after the Major got back from France. And after my mother died . . .’ He shrugged again.

She took the box of whale teeth he held out, absently opening and shutting its blue velvet-lined lid. ‘How long ago?’

‘My mother? Soon after the war, about a year or so later. I was ten.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply.

He turned to the bookshelf, pulling a weathered pigskin journal from a shelf. ‘A journal that belonged to my worthy ancestor. The good Captain wrote every day of his adult life.’

She opened the journal, turning pages at random. ‘Tidal longings . . .’ she murmured. The light from the casement windows threw diamond patterns across the walls and the russet of her bent head. ‘So do you harbour them, too?’ She looked up, a smile playing about her lips. ‘The Major told me that it skips a generation sometimes, but surface it does, time and again – the Stonebridge men and their fondness for the sea.’

Jim chuckled, settling himself against the desk. ‘Sure, I think about it sometimes. What it’d be like to live at sea, nothing around but wind and high water. But no, this is home and the Connecticut’s more than enough for me. The Connecticut river,’ he elaborated. ‘Fishing. Swimming. Canoeing. If you behave yourself, I might even take you there sometime.’

Shutting the journal, she reached behind him to place it on the desk then straightened to look him square in the face, parting those soft, ruby, contoured lips. ‘And if I don’t?’

Their eyes met, held. Before he could come up with a suitable retort, she’d stepped away.

The Major sat in his armchair and stared unseeing into the black mirror. The afternoon had been a mistake from the start. He should’ve known better. It was the way the boy had mentioned her visit though, the studied casualness of his tone, as if it didn’t matter much either way, when clearly,
she
did.

The bowtie he’d put on with such care only a couple of hours earlier felt close and stifling. He tugged at it and it came apart, the ends hanging about his neck.

He should’ve known better. Too long. Too long since he’d last played host, and it was probably too late now. When a man had lived for a time with only the very familiar, the smallest unknown variable could upset everything. Even the most innocent of questions came fused with fault wires, threatening to destroy the shaky equilibrium so hard won, so painfully assembled over the years, exposing the bleached bones of memory long buried.

Dances, she had asked about, tapping her heel on the wooden floor, and it was as if the years had rolled back in an instant.

He could clearly hear the band, as if it were still playing from the stage set up in the corner of the dance floor; a mighty go they were having at the song too. The light from the sconces was reflected in the polished gleam of their instruments, flaring from the brass mouths of the trumpets and the hoops of the drums.

‘
When Yankee Doodle came to Paris town
Upon his face he wore a little frown
To those he’d meet upon the street, he couldn’t speak a word
To find a Miss that he could kiss, it seemed to be absurd.
’

The room felt close, stuffy, belying the snowdrifts that lay outside. So many people, the entire town it seemed, had turned out for this homecoming of one of their own. Suntanned, shiny-medalled, Raydon born and bred Yankee doughboy, on furlough from Paris and the war to end all wars: Major James Arthur Stonebridge.

A chorus of partygoers belted out the lyrics to the song, whatever they knew of it at least, mostly seizing enthusiastically on the word ‘Yankee’. The noise hurt his ears. He started at each crash of the cymbals, his hand jerking reflexively to his shoulder for a rifle that wasn’t there.

‘
But if this YANKEE should stay there awhile
Upon his face you’re bound to see a smile
Soon YANKEE DOODLE he left Paris town
Upon his face there was a coat of brown
For every man of Uncle Sam was fighting in a trench
Between each shell, they learned quite well to speak a little
French.
’

He especially hated it when they came up on him from behind. An unending stream of guests, shaking his hand, taking his arm, slapping him on the shoulder as they offered their congratulations.

‘Good on you, James!’

‘Gave the Boche a taste of Yankee spirit, I bet.’

‘I tell you Stonebridge, if I were younger, I would’ve been right there in the trenches with you boys. Pow, pow pow, giving those Germans a right good shellacking.’

It was so hot indoors. Sweat trickled down his neck, pooling slowly under his collar. He glanced longingly at the windows, picturing the clear, frosty night that lay just outside. The maples outlined in blue, thrusting bare-armed shadows over the ice.

He nodded at yet another guest come to felicitate him, barely making out the man’s words. His back itched as the sweat crept down his spine and for a disorienting moment, it was as if he were back at the Front. Unwashed and under-slept, so filthy that his entire body itched and he couldn’t tell if it was from the mud drying on his skin or the cooties in his uniform.

Reaching for his pocket square, he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

A woman leaned in, eyes bright with interest. ‘How many of the Germans did you get, James? I mean, personally? I hear some men kept count, like notches in a belt?’

The excited twitch of her lips as she awaited his reply, those vulgar, suffragette, blood-red lips that had suddenly become de rigueur and perfectly acceptable in polite society while he’d been gone.

Overcome with loathing, he set down his glass and turned abruptly to his wife. ‘Let’s dance.’

He limped about the periphery of the dance floor, pain shooting up his damaged leg. It had been bothering him all evening, but he was too proud to use his cane and give these jackasses something more to chatter about. Why had he ever agreed to this mayhem? It had been his wife’s idea, alarmed as she was by the stooped, silent husband who had returned to convalesce from his wounds, with dark circles under eyes that seemed so lifeless.

‘I could hire a band from that new hotel in Montpelier,’ she had suggested tentatively. ‘A winter ball, it’s been a while since we’ve hosted one of those . . .’ It had been easier then just to nod in agreement than acknowledge the anxiety that she tried so hard to hide each time she looked at him.

He kept to the edge of the dance floor now, so that there was nobody at his back. His face expressionless, but his eyes darting ceaselessly from one end of the room to the other. It was foolish, he knew. Yet he could no more help this constant vigilance than deny his time at the Front. Round the room they went, his wife gladdened by his offer to dance, mistaking it for a glimpse of the husband she’d once had and laughing as she sang along.

‘
When YANKEE DOODLE! gets back to Paree
He’ll break a million hearts take it from me.
When YANKEE DOODLE! learns to Parlez vous Francais
Parlez vous Francais, in the proper way
He will call each girlie ‘Ma Cherie’
To every Miss that wants a kiss he’ll say Oui Oui
.’

A whirligig of feet on the floor, twisting, pirouetting, dancing. Round-toed and high-heeled, suede and supple, polished leather. A wave of anger swept over him as he recalled the inane conversation he’d had with yet another guest that night.

‘See what you boys have gone and done, Stonebridge,’ Doug Garland had said insouciantly. ‘Now they’re saying that the puttees you wear in the trenches would make good aids for hunting.’

‘I saw something in
Vanity Fair
,’ Mrs Garland helpfully piped up. ‘A long length of wool, wound about the ankle and up to the calf. They’re all the rage in men’s fashion I understand. What colour would you suggest I get for Doug though? Khaki would be the most authentic, I suppose?’

Garland had grimaced, pulling on his cigar. ‘The ugliest trend, and one that I hope is soon put to an end . . .’

The Major’s face tightened as he remembered, the anger inside knotting into a hard, impotent rage. It all felt so wrong – the carousing, these effete men in their kid-leather shoes. What of all those worn, frost-stiffened boots? That bone-wearied tread, men marching mile after interminable mile, whether towards oblivion or deliverance, they hardly knew and were too tired to care.

He glanced towards the windows again, perspiring freely now and longing for air.

The music grew louder, the feet around him moving dizzyingly fast. A woman’s white slipper, tap, tap, tapping on the floor. His wife said something to him, her words lost in the raucous sound. He shook his head to clear it. ‘What?’

She leaned closer to repeat what she’d said, then changed her mind. ‘Nothing,’ she mouthed, laughing as she shook her head.

His nostrils flared as he caught a whiff of her perfume. Sweetly floral, mingling with the other scents in the room: of firewood, citrus, alcohol and musk. The balm of the civilised world. All false. Artificial. These lights, this bonhomie, the inanities of people who would never understand what it was really like over there.

A wave of bile rose in his throat.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, shaking the Major from his reverie. Suddenly aware of his watering eye, the Major clapped a hand over it, filled with longing for the solitude of the orchard.

Jim eyed his father’s reflection in the glass, warily noting the strained tautness of his face and trying to gauge his mood. Before he could say anything, however:

‘A Claude mirror!!’ Madeleine was staring wide-eyed at the black mirror.

‘Why . . . yes,’ the Major mumbled, surprised.

‘I’ve never seen one this big, in fact the only one I’ve ever seen is one that a friend of my father’s owned. And that was tiny. This . . . this is . . .’ her hands fluttered before her as she tried to formulate the words. ‘It’s
so
beautiful.’