Keeping the World Away (18 page)

‘Priscilla is unwell,’ Lady Falconer said.

‘Oh?’ said Charlotte, wondering what she was meant to assume by ‘unwell’. Priscilla was often ‘unwell’. It might mean anything, from having the curse, or toothache, to pneumonia.

‘She is to have a child.’

‘Oh!’ cried Charlotte, in quite a different tone, so excited that she spilled tea on her dress, which in turn brought another exclamation from her mother, one of extreme irritation.

‘Charlotte,
will
you be careful!’

‘But it was a shock,’ Charlotte said, ‘a pleasant one, but such a shock.’

‘I think you mean a surprise.’

‘No, I do not, Mama, I mean
shock
. I was startled.’

‘So was Priscilla,’ Lady Falconer said, drily.

‘When will the baby be born?’

‘The spring. But do not mention this to anyone, it is far too soon.’

‘I will be an aunt.’

‘You will indeed, and a good one, I hope.’

‘What is a good aunt?’

‘Someone reliable and helpful, someone a child can depend on and look up to …’

‘And have fun with.’

‘Having fun is not high on a list of qualities needed to be a good aunt.’

‘Then it should be. I wish I had an aunt I could have fun with.’

‘At last,’ said Lady Falconer, as her husband entered the room at that moment.

Sir Edward sighed. Told the news, he covered his eyes with his hands, and sighed again.

‘Papa’ said Charlotte, ‘why are you not thrilled? You will be a grandfather, think of it.’

‘I am thinking of it,’ Sir Edward said, gloomily.

‘I shall go to Priscilla for her lying-in,’ his wife said. ‘She has no idea how to manage a household. Even after a year, she appears to have learned nothing. She will need me. Arrangements will have to be made here.’

‘Arrangements?’ queried Sir Edward.

‘For you, for Charlotte. I leave you for a mere week and come back to chaos. I cannot leave you for what is likely to be two months or so.’

There followed a squabble about the alleged ‘chaos’ in the house. Neither raised their voice but it was an unseemly display, one which they would not normally have given in front of their daughter (though she enjoyed it hugely, while taking care to keep her eyes on her feet and her expression blank). There was an antagonism between her parents with which she was all too familiar but which she did not understand.

‘I shall make my own arrangements,’ Sir Edward was saying, ‘for myself and Charlotte. This house will be shut up. Two months, did you say? We will make it three.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’ his wife asked, frowning. ‘There is no need to shut the house up, that is absurd, we will lose all the servants …’

‘We will pay the servants to take a holiday.’

‘Edward, do not be so ridiculous.’ And then, remembering herself, appalled to have spoken to her husband in such a way in front of her daughter, Lady Falconer said, ‘Charlotte, leave the room at once.’

‘Charlotte,’ Sir Edward barked, ‘stay! What I have to say concerns you. We will go, you and I, on a tour while your mother is with Priscilla. It is an ideal opportunity. We will go to Paris and Florence and Rome, to continue your art education. It is settled.’

Charlotte shrieked with joy and, leaping up to fling her arms round her father’s neck, sent the whole tea-tray crashing from the little table onto the carpet where the milk left in the jug formed a tiny puddle, and the tea seeped slowly into it. Nothing was broken but the mess looked worse than it turned out to be, and Charlotte made it worse still by scrabbling on the floor and crushing sugar into the carpet as she tried to mop up the tea. Lady Falconer was white, not red, with anger, and left the room before she lost control and said something to her husband which she would regret. Mabel, sent in to clear up the spillage, found Sir Edward and his daughter (Charlotte very dishevelled and pink, Sir Edward dazed) staring at each other, in some sort of trance. Quietly, she cleared things away and asked if fresh tea was required. They both shook their heads. ‘Oh, Papa!’ she heard
Miss
Charlotte say, softly, and then again, so happily, ‘Oh, Papa!’ And Sir Edward smiled.

*

Charlotte announced the good news to the painting. She sat on the edge of her bed, hands clasped as though in prayer, and whispered. She did not feel in the least foolish – it felt natural to say out loud what she wanted the painting to hear. It was as she imagined it must be going to confession and seeing no one but knowing that behind the grille someone was there. Behind the painting someone still must be there, and though they might now be hundreds, even thousands, of miles away, painting other pictures, their presence hung in the empty room. Never once did Charlotte consider that the artist might be dead.

Lying in bed, much too excited to sleep, she blessed Priscilla. Without the wonderful opportunity given to him, she doubted whether her father would ever have fulfilled his promise to her. Every time she had reminded him, he looked uncomfortable, and she had begun to think the tour would never happen. And now they were to go to Paris and Florence and Rome and she felt giddy with the thrill of it. She would need a valise herself. Suddenly, she thought of using the valise, the wrong valise, in which the painting had been stowed. She could stow it away again, take it with her, have it by her side every night in strange places. She might even, without knowing it, take the painting to the place whence it had come – there had been labels of so many European cities all over the luggage. But then she thought of the risk. At home here it was safe, until her return, quietly waiting for her, unremarked by anyone, something to look forward to. It was not sensible to travel with it. There would be trains and boats and hotels and cabs and at every stage the dreadful possibility of the valise being lost in exactly the way it had been lost before. It was tempting fate to transport her picture.

‘I will not tempt fate,’ Charlotte promised, reaching out and touching the painting.

*

The enormity of what he had done at first overwhelmed Sir Edward. Much though he loved Charlotte and enjoyed her
company
, he was daunted by the thought of being alone with her for three months and responsible for her in circumstances so different from home. The child had never travelled abroad. Indeed, she had hardly travelled in her own country. He would have to establish firm ground-rules from the beginning or she would exhaust him. Never once, with him, had she made the scenes his wife complained about, never once had she given him a moment’s trouble, but then he had never been alone with her for more than a couple of hours at the most. She was not, he reminded himself, a child at all. She was a young woman, even if not dangerously pretty, and would need to be chaperoned at all times.

But then Sir Edward consoled himself with the realisation that Charlotte, too, liked to be by herself, and to read in peace. They would be staying in pleasant hotels where their rooms would be comfortable and Charlotte would not resent being sent to her room any more than he would regret going to his own. And she might make friends, of other young women with their mothers or aunts and who might welcome her company. It was unlikely, but always possible. Charlotte would become a different girl abroad. She would mature, become more sociable, acquire graces she did not have.

Paris first. Not the Hôtel Crillon. Such hotels were his wife’s preference, not his. He knew of another, smaller, much less fashionable place in Montparnasse, the Hôtel de Nice. They would stay there a week and go every day to the Louvre. Perhaps not every day, but most days. Charlotte would want to see the obvious sights, he supposed, Notre Dame and so on, but this could be kept to a minimum – they were there for the art, after all, this was to be a serious pilgrimage, one she would remember all her life and gain much from.

The thought pleased him.

III

CLOSING UP THE
Hampstead house was quite a business. It was not, as Lady Falconer complained to her departing husband, as if one could merely walk out of the front door and pull it behind one. Three months was a long time. Time for dust to gather so thickly that precious furniture might be harmed. (‘How?’ Sir Edward had enquired. ‘How does dust harm?’) Every item needed to be covered with protective dust sheets (‘Easy enough, I should have thought’) and breakable valuables put away entirely (‘Why? With no one in the place to break them?’). The beds needed stripping, the larder must be emptied of food, most of the servants dispersed. Jessie had agreed to accept half-pay and not take another situation. She would go home to Norfolk for the three months and return to get the house ready when called upon. But the maids, who had only been offered a quarter of their wage as a retainer, promptly found other places. It was against Lady Falconer’s principles (‘What principles?’) to try to bribe them to return, and so she would be faced with having to hire new people at the end of June. The aggravation was immense.

But finally the deed was done and she was free to go to Priscilla, now very near her time and in a panic of terror about her confinement. It was not an attractive prospect. Priscilla lived in a muddle, and not a gloriously happy one. Lady Falconer felt that she had made a mistake: what she should have done was have her daughter come home, to her. Then the house need never have been so inconveniently shut up, and her own life could have carried on regardless. She berated herself all the way to Oxford for her own short-sightedness, but it was too late now. She was doomed to spend three months trying to organise Priscilla’s household while her own husband gallivanted across Europe with Charlotte. She
did
at least have enough self-awareness to realise that she was, in effect, jealous. It was not that she had truly wanted to accompany them – she most certainly would not have wanted to travel with the excitable Charlotte – but that she could hardly bear the intense pleasure both husband and daughter seemed to be experiencing, even before they set off. The house had rung with Charlotte’s laughter, and singing (tuneless), while she lumbered around getting ready to go, and each mealtime was an occasion for the endless discussion of itineraries and timetables. Sir Edward had grown more genial by the minute which, considering his usual morose state, was hard to bear. Only with Charlotte, it seemed, could he be good company – she herself was excluded.

They were such an odd-looking pair as they set off. Charlotte did not look as though she belonged to her father at all – he was so distinguished-looking, so tall and handsome, his clothes beautifully tailored and fitting to perfection, and Charlotte was, well, Charlotte. Lady Falconer had done her best. She had had new clothes bought for the child, and her friend Pamela (who chose them) had managed to turn Charlotte from being a frump into being just a tidy nonentity. Lady Falconer did not think she could have done much better herself and gave herself credit for knowing that if she had gone shopping with her daughter they would have had unpleasant scenes and returned with nothing. So there Charlotte was, large and lumpy, clothed in navy blue with white touches at the neck and wrists, looking like a governess next to her elegant papa. If she sensed the contrast – and Lady Falconer was well aware of Charlotte’s sensitivity and intelligence – it did not depress her. Her face shone with happiness, her smile wider than any that had been seen on her face for years.

They had one rather affecting conversation together before Charlotte’s departure. It was about the little painting. Charlotte asked what would happen to her bedroom while she was gone.

‘Happen?’ her mother had echoed. ‘Why, nothing will happen to it. The house, as you very well know, is to be locked up.’

Charlotte’s brow furrowed with anxiety. ‘Do you think my painting could be placed in Papa’s safe?’

‘Whatever for?’

‘In case the house is broken into and …’

‘Charlotte! Please, it is enough trouble closing the house without imagining such disasters.’

‘But
could
it go in the safe?’

Lady Falconer, out of sheer exasperation, said no, the safe was small and would be full of real valuables. ‘No one,’ she said, ‘would think of stealing that daub,’ so she assured her daughter. The child’s passion for it was inexplicable to her, but she had to respect the fact that it was obviously genuine. She herself sat on Charlotte’s bed and looked at it in complete bewilderment. She saw nothing moving or compelling there. The colours seemed drab and faded, the composition ordinary, and yet Charlotte acted as though it had some mystical force.

Years ago, very many years ago, Edward had tried to interest her in art and she had tried to respond. He had taken her to the National Gallery and stood in awe before several of his favourite masterpieces. She stood at his side, but not in awe. Sometimes, a face would strike her as beautiful, sometimes colours would appeal to her, but she felt nothing move within herself, and she soon grew bored. Edward talked to her about the paintings he revered, and about the artists who painted them (mostly the Dutch masters), and she absorbed the information, but it made no difference. And once she had confessed her indifference there seemed no point pretending. The art in their house had been chosen by Edward and she hardly noticed it. His prize was a ‘masterpiece’, a painting of a Dutch interior by Pieter de Hoogh. It was a pleasant enough picture, but when she saw Edward standing rapt in front of it, as he so often did, her puzzlement soon turned to a kind of frustration – why could not
she
be spellbound? – and then to resentment. She felt excluded, condemned for her lack of taste even, and in addition she had the irrational impression that she was being hoaxed. Edward was only doing it to annoy. When she found Charlotte, aged a mere six years old, standing staring at his beloved Pieter de Hoogh with him and showing evidence of also being smitten, she had felt somehow humiliated.
There
was some lack in her which prevented her appreciating, and responding to, art. It was not lack of education – Edward had provided that – nor of any aesthetic qualities, she was sure. She could enjoy and be moved by music, and she knew that in her dress she showed great taste and style.