The Edge of the Fall (27 page)

Don't forget me
, she wanted to say.
I'll come back
. Celia's face was so pained. Louisa remembered the child she'd been, always chasing after Celia, begging her for permission to join in their games.
Wait for me!

Then they were on their way to London. The horses reared again and they clattered down, turned the corner – and in a
minute they were out on the road. He was still holding her close. After ten minutes of the wind blowing hard in her ears, he patted her shoulder.

‘I think we're free now.'

‘Thank you, cousin.' She could say nothing else. Her heart was wild, her breath still short and her head would not calm.

‘I'm sorry, cousin. All this must be most unsettling. But rest assured, I am here to look after you. I won't let anything happen to you.'

She sat up and stared out at the farms they were passing, fixing her eyes on them so that they didn't fill with panicked tears. She tried to breathe in the air, thinking about the trees that sped past them, each one marking their distance from Stoneythorpe.

At Boulbrook Inn they changed to a car, a private one with a padded interior that would take them all the way to London. She touched the outside, grey and shiny. ‘Nice, isn't it?' Arthur said. ‘Smithson organised it for me, although, of course, I didn't tell him why. I might pop in for something to eat. A man needs his breakfast, you know.'

She clutched his hand. ‘Can I come too?'

He shook his head. ‘You'll be fine here. I won't be a minute.' She clambered into the car, threw herself back against the leather interior. She wanted to reach out and touch each part of it, beautiful and shining, all different varieties of dark grey. But she couldn't concentrate, the darkness outside enveloped her and she wished Arthur was with her.

After half an hour or so, Arthur came back, smelling different. ‘I bought you a cake,' he said. ‘In case you're hungry.'

She looked at it, worriedly. ‘I wish we hadn't run away so early. It seems so – wrong.'

‘Oh, cousin, don't worry. They're upset now, but soon they'll be pleased for you that you're enjoying yourself. Now, what you really need to think about is this car – this beautiful car. And how you'll be arriving in London in the most splendid car imaginable! Don't you think they'll all envy you?' He started the engine with the key.

She nodded, her mind still untidy.

‘Think of that! How beautiful you'll be! How sought after. The honourable Miss Deerhurst in the most fashionable car. You'll take London by storm.'

‘Thank you.' She couldn't say anything else. The words were too confusing, they stuck in her throat.

He turned off the engine. ‘Louisa,' he said. ‘I think there's something we should think about.'

She gazed at him. Perhaps he was going to take her back.

‘I think we should get married.'

‘What?'

‘We should get married,' he rushed on.

‘You're my cousin! We can't get married!' He was joking, surely, throwing out things to make her laugh.

‘Louisa, if we're married we can live together. It will keep you safe and I like spending time with you.'

‘What about the family I'm meant to be staying with? We don't need to be married.' The thoughts were whirling around, dizzying her mind. ‘I'm too young to get married.'

‘No, you're not.'

I don't want to!
she wanted to shout. She knew he was only being kind, trying to look after her. But she was about to be free, finally. London was waiting for her. She didn't want to upset him so she tried to speak softly. ‘Arthur. I think I'm too young.' Mr Grierson, the solicitor, had talked on about how she should be careful of marriage. She'd thought then that she wouldn't get married for years.

‘But you'd be safer that way. Anyway, I could take you to more places as my wife.'

She tried to give a gentle smile that said –
let's not say this
. She couldn't say
no
. Surely he'd understand.

Arthur turned back, looked out ahead. She'd made him angry. But what could she do? He'd been carried away by their rush from Stoneythorpe – and now he was probably even regretting the question.

Finally, he sighed. ‘Let's go then,' he said. ‘If that's what you want.'

They drove on. She looked forward until the light made her eyes weep, so she had to bury her face in Arthur's coat until they had settled again. ‘We're passing Woking!' he shouted. He laughed, their earlier conversation seemingly forgotten. She clutched his hand, laughed too. The stems around her heart swelled and exploded.
I'm going to London, Mama
.

EIGHTEEN

London, April 1920

Louisa

There were so many parties. Every night – Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, you couldn't tell them apart because there was always a party. Silver trays bearing glasses of pale liquid, tables with piles of food that no one ate, dresses with sequins, glittering, red, blue, green, yellow, so many colours it was as if a child had picked up a dozen pots of paint, thrown them on to paper, swirled them together, and painted a hundred bodies. The gowns were gossamer thin, floating around legs, low cut, high cut, bare arms, white gloves, silver gloves, gold bags. If she gazed at them and let her eyes blur, the room was nothing but colour, bright eyes, open laughing mouths. And then the diamonds, thousands of them, fake and real, around slim necks, tiny wrists, stacked over red, blonde or brown hair, woven into curls, through plaits, curved around buns, dancing on shingled bobs, decorating tiaras. Other gems too, rubies, emeralds, sapphires; Louisa would never know if they were fake, like hers – she could have had Mama's, of course, but they were so old-fashioned. Arthur said he'd buy her some good ones when he made money through his business. If she had the choice, she thought, she'd only wear opals, like Mary Dewer. She loved their cracks of colour, the shimmering depths, she would cover her hair with them if she could, even though they were bad luck. She preferred them to diamonds. There were so many diamonds, you could grow dizzy with them. You had to make a decision not to be sucked in, to keep your mind in one place.
Look
, she said,
I can resist. I am myself
.

‘She's doing it again,' Louisa said to the girl next to her. But the music was so loud that no one could hear.

She stared across the room, past the sea of shimmering bodies, bright faces, slicked hair in diamond headbands, painted-on smiles. Jennifer Redesdale leant against the pillar, batting those eyelashes that weren't even real while Edward Munsden talked in her ear.

Louisa knew she shouldn't be staring, knew it was gauche. She tore her eyes away but found herself staring at them again. Jennifer's mauve was very chic. Was Louisa's green gown really elegant? She'd thought it was at the dressmaker's, pale mint with silver embroidery, flat over the bosom, so short it touched her calves. Now, looking down, she wasn't sure she had the figure for these new types of gowns; you needed to be tall and wiry, like Celia, not smaller with too much bosom. She felt clumsy, too young, shy. She wished Arthur would stay with her at the balls, rather than wandering off to drink with his friends.

She'd had her hair cut, finally, to try to fit in. She'd sat in the hairdresser's as a sharp woman clipped and cut around her, fiddling, pulling her hair. She'd been too shy to ask the woman to cut off one whole skein, so that she could keep it for herself. Instead all her hair, years and years of it, lay on the floor around her feet. At first she wasn't sure about the cut, felt it too stark around her face. But she had to keep with it now, tie around jewelled headbands, play the modern girl.

Frederick le Touche was watching Jennifer. Some people shunned him. They saw an ugly little man, bent over and hunch-backed, one eye half closed by some childhood disease, a tiny mouth, pock-marked skin and dark hair greased over, which never looked quite clean. They looked at him fearfully – after all, he could hardly have been injured in the war, not with a hunched back like that. He noticed it, he saw them, and then, by the time they understood he was the chief columnist for the
Mail
and thus able entirely to direct a girl's fame – well, it didn't matter how much they made up to him, the die was set. Unless they were quite captivatingly beautiful, or did something daring like sliding down the banister wearing high heels in front of a whole party, Frederick
would damn them with the worst possible fate: no mention at all, neither good nor bad. And then they would be nothing, for you were only something if you were in the newspapers. Jennifer was clever. She had always cultivated him.

Louisa wondered what he was going to write about Jennifer Redesdale. Louisa almost hated picking up the newspaper because Jennifer was always in it. Sometimes they named her, other times she was ‘glamorous society beauty, R'. But either way, seeing her made Louisa's blood boil. She didn't know how Jennifer had got the time to be so glamorous. Louisa's days were so filled – parties until four in the morning or so, then stumble to bed, wake at midday in time to dress for lunch with the Merlings. Then there was tea and soon it was time to drink and dance again. She supposed she was going to have to start getting up earlier. And yet the problem was that, even if she did, she wasn't exactly sure what to order her dressmaker to do; her outfits – like this mint-green gown – never quite looked right when she came to wear them.

She gazed over at Edward, still listening intently to Jennifer, his face tipped towards her, wearing a smile that Louisa knew well: gentle, waiting to be charmed. She watched Jennifer reaching out her hand to touch his shoulder. ‘I think my heart is breaking,' Louisa said, but quiet, trying out the words.

Time had passed quickly since they'd arrived in London. Too fast, she thought. Arthur had arranged her rooms in Hill Street with the Merlings, a quiet mother and two daughters who sometimes asked her to play the piano. He took the rooms upstairs, so he was still there for her – although of course they couldn't live together. Her bedroom at the Merlings' was right under his sitting room. Sometimes she'd lie in bed, hear the sound of his feet walking over the ceiling, feel reassured.

On the day after they'd arrived at the Merlings', he'd asked her to write to Aunt Verena. ‘I will tell you what to write!' he said. He leant over her, speaking the words as she wrote them down, hand shaking. She told her aunt that they wouldn't be long, that they had respectable lodgings with the Merlings, that Arthur was
looking after her. ‘Don't worry about me. I'm perfectly safe. I'll be home soon,' he dictated.

She looked up. ‘We're going back?'

He shook his head. ‘Don't worry. I'm just saying that. You know, they will be so happy that you're here safely, they won't mind when you go back. They know Stoneythorpe isn't a place for a young girl.'

She signed off the letter with love and passed it to him. She hadn't realised that they would think she wasn't safe. ‘Should we invite them to come and see us? I didn't give the address.'

‘Well, I could invite them. I doubt they'd come. They're too busy, otherwise they'd have brought you down to London themselves, wouldn't they?'

‘Maybe we
should
invite them.' They had left so quickly. She worried about Aunt Verena.

He patted her shoulder. ‘Of course. I'll write it in the letter.'

She looked at him. ‘We can stay as long as we want?'

‘Haven't I always said that?' He squeezed her shoulder. ‘As long as we want. We can stay for ever, if we like!'

‘But we'll pay them visits?'

He patted her shoulder, again. ‘Anything you want.'

She'd lain in bed that second night, in her room that wasn't much bigger than her one at Stoneythorpe, listening to Arthur pacing around upstairs, wishing she could go and talk to him. The first evening, playing cards with the Merlings, had been beyond dull. But every time she wanted to complain, she reminded herself: you're in London! Soon things will begin.

The next afternoon, Arthur had gone out – he'd said he was laying the foundations of her social appearance – and she'd been alone in the rooms. She'd thrown herself, melancholy, on to her bed. She'd thought he would take her out the minute she arrived. Instead, she must go for a walk with the Merlings. They put on their hats and shawls and walked outside towards Hyde Park.

‘The air will do you good, dear,' said Mrs Merling, plump-faced under her giant hat. ‘Put some colour into your cheeks.'

They trailed along, Louisa feeling tired and cold, walking with
the youngest Miss Merling, Lucy, only thirteen. She began to wonder if they could have talked to Verena, persuaded her to come with Celia to London. But then Arthur would say his mother would never come to London. Verena hated the bustle and the rush of people, just as Mama had. Louisa turned her face forwards. She had only just arrived. She shouldn't rush to judgements. They turned and walked towards Queensway.