In Distant Fields (9 page)

But social niceties were not the Duke's present preoccupation. He was worried about many things concerning his estates. The servant problem always vexed such enormous households as they lost more and more tenants to the nearby towns and their ever-growing industries. Then there was the land problem, a predicament regularly made worse by ever-increasing taxes brought in by the Liberals, taxes that were making it harder and harder to farm profitably but productively, which affected how many horses he was going to be able to keep. Hawkesworth, his estate manager, did not appreciate the Duke's preoccupation with the comfort and well-being of the horses. He was constantly trying to point out to His Grace that the main stables were full to overflowing, and many of the smaller outhouses sheltered long-outgrown children's ponies from whom the Duke could never part.

‘Must keep them for when the grandchildren come along. Can't have them riding about on bicycles, Hawkesworth,' he would murmur every time the dreaded accounting day dawned.

‘Can't keep every horse or pony we've bred either, Your Grace.'

‘The stables need fodder, the stables need bedding; we grow both and employment is the result,' the Duke insisted.

Yet now, as another year drew to a close, he found he was being pressurised by Hawkesworth to pull in his belt.

‘Hawkesworth'll soon be telling me I have to do without my tea and biscuits,' he would grumble as he did evening stables with Jossy and the lads. ‘How the devil can you expect to keep an estate running without animals? Stands to reason, animals eat, food is grown, and eaten, by humans and animals, end of the year sees barns full, animals and humans happy. What else is there to be done? Which other way is there to go?'

‘Search me, Your Grace – fact is, you can search me from head to toe but you'll not find an answer.'

‘No, nor would you if you did the same to me, Jossy.'

‘Without t'stable what would we 'ave? No cobbler, no saddler, no grooms, no employment, and we all know what towns do to folk. No, stables is the foundation of all that is good in our society, and we know that. Always will be, and always has been. Take the stables out of life and what do you have? Metal! And fumes! Metal and fumes!'

‘And where do they get us when night falls?'
the Duke would return, patting Barrymore Boy, his favourite hunter, and pulling his generous ears. ‘Nowhere at all, nowhere at all.'

But the Duke sensed he was fighting a losing battle. He was too shrewd a man to ignore what he saw as the wretched and ignoble march of progress, and while he privately subscribed to the school of philosophy that welcomed changes as long as they helped to keep everything the same, he knew that sooner or later, whether he liked it or not, his horses, as on so many estates, would start to be replaced by machines, and Hawkesworth's eyes would linger yet more over the cost of hay and straw and oats, and what not.

But there was still the New Year's ball to be got through, and he had not asked his hostess's sister for the pleasure of a dance, which was remiss of him. He walked across the ballroom to where she was seated, and as he did so he passed the young, all of whom were leaving to fetch refreshment for their partners, or seek out new ones. To the older man they all looked younger and bonnier than they had ever done, and comfortingly innocent.

He bowed to the lady of his choice. ‘Lady Frances, might I have the pleasure?'

Lady Frances Tillingham smiled. ‘Why, John, we haven't danced since my coming out, have we?'

‘Come, come, Frances, that can't be true.'

‘No, it can't be true, but it might be!'

They both laughed, and stepped onto the
dance floor, passing Partita and Peregrine as they did so.

‘There is such talk of invasion …' Peregrine was saying.

‘Invasion talk is so dull.' Partita's tone was deliberately flippant because she had just seen Allegra disappearing into the conservatory with James Millings. Cecilia too was nowhere to be seen, which was also quite suspicious-making since it seemed Mamma was too busy dancing and enjoying herself to notice.

‘It will not be dull if you get up in the morning and find a boatload of Serbs at the castle gates, I do assure you, Tita. They are said to be arriving in their hundreds off the Norfolk and Cornish coasts, so the newspapers tell us.'

‘Are they very fierce? Will they be armed to the teeth with sabres and cutlasses, do the newspapers fell us? Is the
Morning Post
warning us to keep our eyes and ears out at every point?'

‘I have not the least idea, but I fear that they might be. What will you do when they arrive?'

‘Man the ramparts with buckets of boiling oil, and pour it over their foreign heads,' Partita stated with evident relish. ‘It's all the fault of the Liberals, of course. If they had not made such a mess of things, Papa says, we would at least have some oil to boil. Now because of them the whole world – America, Germany, everyone – is doing better than England.'

‘Your father is right, little Tita, it is the fault of the Liberals,' Peregrine agreed as the dance
ended. ‘Now I must go and rescue my poor sister, who I see has been stationed behind the dowagers for more dances than I care to think about.'

‘I do wish you would not still call me little Tita.'

As Partita looked up at him Peregrine saw that her large blue eyes were filling with tears.

He leaned forward, horrified. ‘I did not mean to hurt your feelings. I was only teasing.' He leaned further forward, touching her lightly on the arm to comfort her, appalled at what he suddenly realised was his lack of sensitivity.

Partita's expression changed to one of mischievous triumph. ‘Ha, ha, you see how good I am at acting? Now I must go and find
my
sisters. I have not seen them for some time.'

She walked off into the crowd.

‘I dare say if you were not a Knowle I would think of a way to punish you,' Peregrine called after her, before looking across the room to where his sister was standing, idly fanning herself.

Poor Livia, she was standing behind the rows of older ladies, all of whom were watching the dancing, waiting for some impudent young man to be found waltzing some innocent girl into the conservatory, always a cause of consternation if it was not immediately followed by a proposal of marriage.

‘Valentine,' Peregrine murmured to Valentine Wynyard Errol, who disliked dancing only a little
less than he disliked his feckless father, Ralph. ‘Valentine? Would you be so gallant, old chap, as to take my sister onto the dance floor and give her a whirl? She is standing behind Mary, Lady Bultash.'

Valentine looked across at Livia. In common with all their friends, he would do anything for Perry, even dance with his sister.

‘Very well. Which one is she?'

‘I told you, she is standing behind Lady Bultash, and beside Elizabeth Milborne. She is in the blue dress.'

As he stared at his sister, Peregrine felt resigned. They were not rich, to say the least, but even so, he always thought that Livia should be given a few new dresses, not always be sent off in some second-hand piece that one of the maids had washed and starched for her. Mind you, this particular evening, the Empire line still being so much in vogue, Livia did not look as out of fashion in her old blue dress as she might.

‘The one in the blue dress, you say?' Valentine turned back to Peregrine. ‘But she is very pretty,' he said, staring.

Valentine manoeuvred behind the row of old trouts seated on gold chairs, and touched Livia Catesby on the shoulder. She turned, startled.

‘I say, would you care for a turn around the floor? Or is your dance card full?'

‘It is blank,' Livia Catesby told him with searing honesty, and as she did so the hopeless look of a drowning kitten left her face and a
really engaging smile replaced it. ‘There is nothing more off-putting to young men than an empty dance card,' she confided, holding her dance card out.

‘Then may I put my name in it for the next dance?'

‘You will find Livia dances like a cart horse,' Consolata, her mother, announced to Valentine's open astonishment.

‘In that case Livia and myself will make a splendid pair. I am famed for my large feet, so much so that when allowed, I wear a harness and horse brasses.'

Consolata fanned herself, unsmiling.

‘Gracious, Consolata,' Opal Gaskell said, turning to her. ‘How delightful to see Livia enjoying herself, and with such a well-set-up young man.'

The older woman fanned herself more vigorously.

‘I think she is such a pretty girl,' Opal went on in encouraging tones.

‘You may think as you wish, Opal dear.'

Opal turned away, and addressed herself to the lady on her other side, because Consolata seemed so determined on disapproval.

‘Has Consolata always been as she is?' Opal asked Lily Stapleton in a lowered tone as, the polka having come to an end, Consolata stood up, and with a look of steely determination walked towards her daughter.

‘Oh, she was much worse when she was younger,' Lily told her, cheerfully. ‘Always
known as “the inconsolable”. Her deepest desire was to go into an enclosed order; but it seems that her father and mother determined that she
must
be married, so she
was
married, to Bede Catesby – usually known to his friends as Blessed Saint Bede Catesby. It was always rumoured that dear Bede died of the shock of siring his two children. My own mother said it was the cruellest thing to have Bede and Consolata marry. I should think it most likely that it
was
cruel. Oh, but do not look, I pray you, oh, do not
say
, Consolata is only marching Livia back here, poor child.'

Lily stood up.

‘Lily, you cannot interfere, my dear, really you cannot.'

Lily looked down briefly at Opal. ‘Neither can I stand by and watch, Opal. I have known Consolata for most of my life, and believe me, whenever possible, she must be stopped from her good intentions.'

Opal hurried off into the crowd, and before Consolata could march Livia back to stand once more behind the older women, Lily had commandeered her son.

‘Pug?'

‘Yes, Mamma?'

‘Go at once to Livia Catesby and ask for the next waltz.' As her son gave her the kind of look that sons always give their mothers when they ask something of them other than what they would like in the way of wine, Lily rapped his
arm sharply with her fan. ‘Go on, go on, Pug, you will have to put your glass down some time during the evening; it might as well be now.'

Pug went up to Livia to ask her for the next waltz, but only just in time to deflect Consolata from her course. Happily Pug and Livia had been friends since childhood.

‘What a frost, being made to dance with you!' Pug remarked, squinting down at Livia as he waltzed her gaily round, a movement that unfortunately made it impossible for his monocle to stay in place. ‘Our mammas seem a trifle overheated, winging about like bats in a rectory garden.'

Livia knew that Pug affected to be a ‘knut', a form of fashionable dandy. It gave him a distinctive air of vague arrogance, as it did all knuts.

‘Dance the next one with me, Pug, do?' Livia begged. ‘I think I would rather die than go back and stand behind all those mothballs waving their fans about and playing cat's cradle with everyone's reputations the moment they see someone so much as smiling at someone else.'

‘Quite so,' Pug agreed, beginning to sweat from the unusual exertions demanded by the polka, or was it a waltz? ‘This is more of a set-to than cricket, do you know that, Livia?' he finished, and puffing and replacing his monocle in his eye, he took her fan from her wrist and waved it in front of his face as they walked off
the floor. ‘Heigh-ho,' he continued in a warning tone. ‘Here comes the old ferocity. Quick, let me put a host of names in your dance card.' He quickly penned different names on the card dangling from her wrist.

‘Livia?'

Consolata had walked across the room to her daughter's side but now, noting the change in her daughter's eyes, she felt her heart quicken. It was as if Livia was a bird she had caught in her hands, but which, after just a few bats of its wings, had flown out of a nearby window.

‘Livia, did you hear me?'

‘Yes, Mamma?'

‘You must return with me to behind the chairs.'

‘Absolutely not, Mrs Catesby,' Pug put in cheerfully, monocle now firmly back in place. ‘You see, Livia's in such demand,' he went on, nodding towards Livia's faked dance card. ‘She will not be sitting out as much as one waltz before the end of the evening.'

Consolata was not given to vanity. She never looked in a mirror unless absolutely necessary, but nor did she ever wear spectacles to balls. She squinted down at the card. She could not make it out. She turned on her heel and went back to join the older women.

‘You are a hoojah, really you are, Pug,' Livia murmured affectionately. ‘But now what do we do?'

‘See what you mean. Only beastliness is, I can't
go on dancing with you, or she will twig straight away. Better get some of the coves whose names I have imprinted here to actually dance with you, what? Follow me, old thing, and I will have whole teams of dudes lined up to trip the light fantastic with you,'

The result of Pug's ruse was that Livia had the ball of her life, and went home not just in love with Valentine Wynyard Errol, which was more or less a racing fixture as far as they were both concerned, but with the whole of life.

She was not the only one to make a success of the evening. Kitty was so much in demand that she ended the evening feeling vaguely guilty, for most of her dancing partners were Partita's admirers.

Not that Partita seemed to mind, only teasingly remarking once they had returned home to Bauders, been undressed by their sleepy maids, and retired to bed, ‘I think you may well end up becoming my sister-in-law!'