Human Traces (3 page)

reluctantly into the night. The blacksmith lived at the bottom of the main street in Sainte Agnes; the open top half of his door revealed a scruffy parlour through which his wife led Jacques out into a yard, on the other side of which was the forge. The blacksmith was working a horseshoe on the anvil when Jacques, against his will, went and stood opposite him. When he had finished hammering the metal into shape, he tossed it casually into a stone water-trough where it hissed for a moment, then was still. Only then did he look up to Jacques. "What do you want?" "Some chains, a ring that can be fixed and two... circular pieces that can be closed." "Manacles?" The blacksmith, a slight man with a greyish face, was known as someone who spoke little. "Well," said Jacques. "Like manacles, I suppose. That shape." "What's it for?" "I don't know. My father... Something for his employer. A tenant wanted them." "How big?" "About... I suppose..." Jacques made a circle with his hands, roughly wrist-sized. "How much chain?" Jacques spread both his arms out wide. "About twice that much." "You can come tomorrow evening, at the same time." Two days later Jacques was excused work by his father and sent to the stable. First, he took out the mare and tethered her outside; then he shovelled up the old straw and excrement and dumped them in the midden on the far side of the yard. Under Olivier's uninterested gaze, he swept the stone floor with water, then took the hefty ring he had collected from the blacksmith and hammered it by its attached point through the back wall of the stable. The point had screw threads that went through a horizontal plate, so that when the nut was tightened, it was braced against the outside wall. Inside, Jacques ran the chain through the loop and attached it at each end, as instructed, to the manacles. He filled the stable with fresh straw and led the horse back into her stall. He looked at Olivier. Thus far, he had managed without difficulty: something about the large hammer, the weight and swing of it in his hand, the wood on the soft skin of his palm, was reassuringly mundane. It was like putting up a fence. When it came to asking Olivier to go back inside, however, he began to falter. His brother was so docile. In the morning, he had helped Olivier to wash beneath the pump and change his clothes; now when he put his arm round him, he felt his soft hair and it reminded him of when they had been children and had wrestled together on the floor: a memory from before he was even fully conscious, of a blessed time. Olivier sat on the fresh straw and allowed Jacques to close the manacles round his wrist and to lock them as the blacksmith had showed him. Olivier said nothing until it was done, then he looked up at Jacques with his eyes full of bewilderment, and Jacques knelt down beside him, sobbing, smelling Olivier's special sweet smell, feeling his brother's heart against his ribs.

Two

In England, the week before Christmas 1876 was cold, nowhere more so than in the wind-troubled flatlands whose coast lies between the Wash and the Humber estuary. In Torrington, a village twelve miles as the angels flew from the cathedral spire of Lincoln, the boys ran down to the frozen duck pond on the green. Those without skates slid back and forth in their boots, gathered snow from the light fall at the edge of the water and hurled it at one another. From her bedroom window in Torrington House, Sonia Midwinter watched enviously, wishing that the dignity of her eighteen years had not disqualified her from joining in. A low but unclouded sun struck crystals from the frozen water, from the white-dusted reeds at its edge and from the icy twigs on the boughs of oak that overhung the pond. Sonia shivered behind the leaded lights of her window; she was wearing only her underclothes, while on the bed behind her lay stockings, bodices and skirts from her still-unfinished dressing. She put a log on the small fire and wrapped a gown round her shoulders. She glanced out of the window. It was nearly noon, and already the sun seemed to be failing in its ascent of the sky, flattening into a tired ellipse that would see it subside before the day had really started. Sonia could make out her younger brother Thomas on the pond, a strong, mysterious boy who teased her more than his two years' juniority should have allowed. She licked her lips and swallowed. In an hour or so she would be meeting Mr. Prendergast and his family honourable Nottingham people, her father had informed her, manufacturers of fine lace. Mr. Richard Prendergast, their elder son, had been introduced to Sonia at her aunt's house the previous Christmas; she had had at the time no idea that it was anything other than a chance meeting, though was later aware of murmured discussions in the drawing room of Torrington House from which she made out the words 'wait a year', and saw her father emerge with the look of purse-lipped satisfaction that she recognised as his 'business done' face. She sighed and picked a plum-coloured silk dress with a tight bodice and a full skirt that gave glimpses of her slender feet, which, her mother assured her, were her best feature. How plain must I be, thought Sonia at her dressing table, that my feet are prettier than my face? She rubbed a hint of red colouring into her lips and tied her hair back with a black ribbon. Her eyes were dark and rapid, her skin was pale and prone to flushing; at the top of her cheeks minute capillaries were visible where the translucent covering of babyhood had never fully thickened into adult skin. She powdered over them and smiled at herself in the glass. Her elder brother Edgar once told her, "You're a pretty girl, Sonia', though he had, sadly, never repeated the compliment; Thomas occasionally called her the Queen of Sheba, spoiling the exotic comparison with some qualification about 'the half was not told unto me'. Her father appeared uneasy about Sonia's presence in the house, embarrassed by her woman's bust and dresses and ball invitations. Mrs. Midwinter spoke to her with the firm encouragement she showed to Amelia, the more backward of her Dalmatian bitches. Sonia went along the landing to her mother's bedroom on the south side of the house, pausing on the polished boards to knock. Mrs. Midwinter was also at her toilet, seated on an upholstered stool that her flesh overflowed in downward-pouring, silk-covered waves. "What have you got on your lips?" "Just the smallest touch of ' "Take it off, for heaven's sake. What would Mr. Prendergast think?" "What are you going to wear, Mama?" "I shall wear my black dress with the white lace at the cuff. You should go and see how Miss Brigstocke's getting along in the kitchen." Sonia grimaced. "What is she preparing?" "Sole, if the fishmonger remembered to get any. Then some consomme. I asked her for a saddle of mutton, but you know what she's like. Some fowl to follow, I think. Your father will have found her something in the game larder, if Amelia hasn't had it." "I hope the Prendergasts are good eaters," said Sonia. "They will need something after that long journey' Mrs. Midwinter rose from her stool and moved slowly over to the oak wardrobe, taking a sugar-dusted bon-bon from a saucer on the way. "Don't forget what a favour they are doing us." "I shan't forget, Mama." Sonia ran along the cold landing to her room, reluctantly removed the colour from her lips, and went down the narrow back staircase, with its powerful 100-year-old scent of lime wood, into the servants' hall. She hurried over the patterned tiles, past the butler's pantry (they had not had a butler for years) and into the cave-like kitchen, where Miss Brigstocke, angular and flushed, was leaning over a two-gallon boiling pot, prodding the contents with a long-handled spoon. "Hello, May," Sonia said to the kitchen maid, who looked up from her potato peeling and smiled apprehensively. "What's in your cauldron, Miss Brigstocke? What does it look like?" "It looks like what it ought to look like," said Miss Brigstocke, neither smiling nor apprehensive. "If you don't mind me saying so." Like Mr. Midwinter, she had difficulty in adjusting to Sonia's almost-adulthood; after ten years of shooing her and spanking her and telling her to mind her p's and q's, she had not found an idiom in which to defer to the young mistress. "Is there anything I can ' "We're doing very well, thank you, Miss. Aren't we, May? It would be different if we was at Torrington Manor, I dare say, Miss, where, as you know ' "Indeed, I do, Miss Brigstocke. Where you worked as a scullery maid for ten years and then for five as ' "Be that as it may, Miss ' "Before you took the position in our poor house without so much as an under-footman to ' "Be that as it may, Miss," said Miss Brigstocke a little more firmly. "I shouldn't have to pluck and clean the birds myself as well as light the range if I was at the Manor, should I? Do you imagine Mrs. Turney ever dirtied her hands with making a sheep's pluck or a proper pig's fry, with all liver, lights and chitterlings like what I have to when Mrs. Midwinter's having one of her what do you call 'em?" "Thrift weeks?" said Sonia. "Offal weeks, I call 'em. I'm up to my elbows in the cavity of the pig, even if Jenkins has made the cut. Well, you don't have to do that sort of thing at the Manor. They get all their pies and that sent from Lincoln, from Trubshawe's, ready-made." "Ah, the Manor, the Manor," laughed Sonia. "Wouldn't it be splendid if we lived at the Manor instead of the Laceys! Papa would be the Member of Parliament and Mama would be a shadow of herself and wear those pastel satins that are all the fashion in London. And I should be Miss Jane. And Edgar would inherit the village. Wouldn't we all be happy? And you, Miss Brigstocke, should have all the help you wanted. Instead of which we're stuck in the rotten old House!" "And what about Master Thomas? What would he be at the Manor?" said May. "Oh dear," said Sonia. "I'd forgotten Master Thomas. There's no equivalent of him, is there? Why do you ask, May?" May looked back quickly to her potatoes. "Sometimes I wonder," said Sonia, standing on tiptoe and leaning over Miss Brigstocke's shoulder to look into the pot, 'what world Thomas does belong to." May laughed, but stopped when Miss Brigstocke caught her eye. Sonia turned back into the room, wanting to say something, but managing to control herself. "It's very gloomy in here, isn't it?" she said. "These dark days," said Miss Brigstocke. "All the light's gone off by noon. And I did ask for more lamps. We shall have to wash the plates by candlelight." So much of the room was dark, besides the blackened range; the framed silhouettes on the wall, to either side of it, were black, as were the pots and pans on the open shelf of the dresser; the ceiling was stained by years of dark fumes; but it was not a cheerless room. Sonia had spent many afternoons of childhood sitting at the big deal table, drawing, talking to bad-tempered Mrs. Travers, Miss Brigstocke's predecessor, or Elmley, the last butler, and inhaling the aromas of the range, all of which were exotic to her young senses, whether onions frying, cooked apples, melted cheese or the powerful scent of roasting meat that would come with a roar and hiss when Mrs. Travers opened the oven door, and stood up scarlet-faced, flapping her white cloth. "I must leave you to it, I'm afraid," said Sonia. "That man's coming from the village to help. You know. Mr. Fisher, the one who came when Papa had to give that dinner." "Lord help us," said Miss Brigstocke. "I think we're supposed to pretend he's the butler," said Sonia, 'as though he works here all the time." "Well, he'll have to do a better job of knowing where things is kept. And not spill the wine this time." "That's your responsibility, Miss Brigstocke. Don't let him anywhere near that bottle of Madeira." May giggled as Sonia went out through the far door, down a dim, panelled passage and out into the bright side of the house. Though well lit by the tall windows that overlooked the drive, the main hall was cold, and Sonia put some logs on to the mean flame that flickered in the fireplace. A circular table in the middle of the space held a vase of winter blooms in icy water, which she rearranged to look more welcoming. What now? She wiped her hands down the front of her dress and looked into the dining room to make sure the places were properly set. May was only fifteen years old and was learning the job as she went along, from what gruff hints she could squeeze from Miss Brigstocke. Sonia straightened a setting on the table. For years she had considered Miss Brigstocke only as she presented herself a bossy, disappointed servant of the kind you might find in any cold house in Lincolnshire; then one day Sonia had discovered a lascivious and private part of her life, far from regular, involving the lamp man Jenkins, and, she suspected, other men as well. As Sonia went back into the hall, the double front doors opened noisily and her father appeared, banging the snow from his hat, then using it to drive a dancing Dalmatian away from him. "Where is your mother, Sonia? They'll be here at any minute. Is that what you're wearing? Never mind. Is Fisher here yet? Get off, Dido!" Mr. Midwinter went up the front stairs, calling to his wife. A carriage arrived, bringing Edgar and his pale young wife, Lucy. Fisher, the occasional butler, walked up the frosty path through the kitchen garden and let himself in at a back door. May came scurrying through from the kitchen with a message from Miss Brigstocke asking how long she was supposed to wait before sending the lunch through. "Oh, yes please," said Mr. Richard Prendergast. "A man can't have too much caper sauce, that's what I always say. And what's sauce for the goose..." He looked at Mrs. Midwinter, then at Sonia, and winked, as he helped himself from the silver jug that Fisher held at his shoulder. "Nice bit of mutton, Midwinter," said Mr. Prendergast the elder, wiping his mouth on a white napkin and settling back in his chair with a glass of claret. "Keep your own sheep, do you?" "There's a small farm, a house, a few cottages. I let the tenants do what they please. I have too much to do in town to give it much attention." Mrs. Prendergast, a tall woman with a high colour who had spoken very little, said, "I suppose you have ever such a large staff here." "Yes," said Mr. and Mrs. Midwinter together. She retreated. "Of course," he went on, 'it's not as easy to get the servants you want these days, but we have to look after the place. It's ours in trust, that's how I see it, to hand on to the next generation. And we have to make sure our daughter's well cared for, don't we?" ' Yes, Papa." Sonia wondered whether he was implying that she had a maid of her own. "And has the house been in the family for long?" said Mrs. Prendergast. "It's only a hundred years old," said Mr. Midwinter. "Completed in the year of American Independence. There's a date carved above the door. I'll show you afterwards, if you like." "And do you live in Nottingham itself?" said Mrs. Midwinter, helping herself to sauce. Sonia noticed the way she had saved her husband from having to make any more ancestral claims. Mrs. Prendergast stretched her long back a little further up in her seat. "We have two houses, as a matter of fact." "Oh." Mrs. Midwinter deflated visibly, but only for a moment. "And are they both in the town?" "No fear!" said Richard Prendergast. "Pater's a great one for the fresh air. Riding to hounds, all that sort of thing. Pass me a bit more of the wine, will you, Fisher, there's a good chap." Fisher stiffened, but managed to extend a yellowish, chorea tic hand to the decanter on the sideboard and pour another glassful for the guest. Richard Prendergast had fair curly hair, some of which he was losing at the temples and from the crown, giving him a half-plucked appearance. He had a small mouth set in red cheeks and blue eyes which moved rapidly from face to face without seeming to take much in. "Good man, Fisher!" he said, drinking deep of the claret that Fisher had extracted from the cellar's furthest bin. '... quite a responsibility," Mrs. Prendergast was saying, 'living in the manor house. Do you ask all the villagers in at Christmas?" "Not all of them," said Mrs. Midwinter vaguely. "So much to do, now Edgar and Lucy are married. And there's a baby due in the New Year, isn't there, Lucy?" Sonia covered her mouth with her napkin. "Manor House!" she imagined Miss Brigstocke spluttering, "I'll show them the Manor House Edgar Midwinter, a solemn young man of twenty-four, cleared his throat and addressed himself to Richard Prendergast. "And are you following your father's line of business, sir?" "Me? Good heavens, no! There are enough lace cuffs in the world, don't you think? No. No, I'm starting a venture with some chums in London. You just can't go wrong at the moment. Of course, you have to know the right people, that's what I always say' "What sort of business?" said Mr. Midwinter keenly. "Sugar." "And will you just import or ' "We expect to act as brokers," said Richard. "I see. And do you have your residence in London?" "Not yet. I'm still lodged with the long-suffering parents. But I intend to move. I have my eye on a place in Mayfair. Just as soon as I can..." He coughed and held his hand in front of his mouth. "Make my arrangements." Sonia found Lucy looking at her across the table, her eyes wide with theatrical excitement. "Mama," she said into a silence that had swiftly and uncomfortably fallen on the room, 'shall I ask May to clear the plates?" "Thank you," said Mrs. Midwinter. "Fisher, tell Miss Brigstocke she may send in the dessert." Sonia left the dining room discreetly, squeezing the oak door closed, then ran down the passage to the kitchen. "Miss