The Passing Bells (20 page)

. . . quite a rung up for your Ivy, and Mrs. Broome said that I'd be making an extra shilling a week from now on.

It was too much of an effort to write. Her heart wasn't in it and she couldn't keep her thoughts from wandering all over the landscape. It was almost with relief that she heard the sound of Mrs. Broome's voice calling for her.

“Ivy? Jane, where is Ivy Thaxton?”

The girl was sure to tell. She shared the garret room with four girls. Sneaks all.

“Out the window, Mrs. Broome. I told her. I said, ‘Ivy,' I said . . .”

Ivy sighed and closed the notebook. Looking up, she saw Mrs. Broome's incredulous face in the garret window.

“Ivy Thaxton! You come up from there this instant before you fall to your death!”

“It's impossible to fall, Mrs. Broome.”

“Perhaps. It is also impossible to permit one of his lordship's staff to scamper across the rooftops like a common chimney sweep! Come up! Come up
at once!”

She returned to the small stuffy garret, climbing in the window with the same agility with which she had climbed out of it. She brushed dust from her skirt while Mrs. Broome stared coldly at her and the other girl in the room pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing.

“Honestly, Ivy,” Mrs. Broome said, “you are incorrigible. Never let me see you out there again.”

“No, Mrs. Broome . . . you won't.”

The housekeeper appeared dubious. “Well, we shall see what we shall see. At least I won't have to concern myself with your extraordinary behavior for the next few days. Miss Alexandra has been invited to Arundel. You will go with her, of course. So hurry along and begin packing. Your mistress will choose her dresses, but you can get started on the underthings and accessories.”

“Yes, Mrs. Broome.”

“Take an extra dress for yourself and plenty of clean aprons and caps.”

“Yes, Mrs. Broome.”

“And don't look so penitent, girl. You're not fooling me one bit. Sitting on a roof indeed!”

They would be leaving first thing in the morning, the eight-thirty train from Victoria. Miss Alexandra was more bubbly and talkative than usual as she agonized over her selection of clothing. The occasion was a three-day house party at the Duke of Avon's ancient, beautiful, but restored (all the modern conveniences) castle. She had gone to school with the duke's daughter, and all the
most
eligible bachelors in England, perhaps in the
entire
empire, had been invited.

“Oh, Lord, I can't possibly be seen in this rag!”

By eleven o'clock that night, the clothes had been selected and carefully packed away. Supper had been brought up on a tray—sandwiches and tea. Ivy barely had two bites of a ham sandwich, being too busy smoothing dresses and skirts.

“Should I take the taffeta? Do you like the yellow silk from Worth's?”

A hem or two needed a few stitches, a button or so was gone and had to be replaced. At last all of the work was done, the cream-colored leather trunks with the Greville coat of arms embossed upon them in gold leaf closed and ready for the footmen to take downstairs in the morning. A three-day house party! Ivy shuddered to think what would have been involved if her mistress had decided to take a world cruise.

“Good night, Ivy. Be up bright and early in the morning.”

“Yes, miss.”

She walked wearily down the corridor and then up the curved staircase to the third floor, where a narrow stairway led to the garret rooms. As she passed one of the doors that faced the landing, it opened and Martin Rilke stepped out. He was wearing a bathrobe and was holding a toothbrush and a tube of Pepsodent.

“Ivy . . . Thaxton?” he asked, smiling.

“Yes, sir,” she said, staring blankly at him.

“Don't you remember me?”

She nodded. “Yes, sir. Mr. Rilke from Chicago.”

“Right! Stockyards and railroads.” She was looking at him curiously, and he suddenly felt at a loss for words. He wanted to say that he'd been hoping to run into her again, that she was just about the prettiest girl he'd ever seen, but he knew that would only confuse and embarrass her. In England, gentlemen didn't speak to maids that way. Maybe they didn't do it in America, either. But then he'd never grown up around maids.

“Well,” he said helplessly. “How do you like being up here in London? Do you miss the country?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you come from here? I mean, are you a Londoner?”

“No, sir. I come from Illingsham, near Norwich.”

He hadn't been to either place on the tour. He was starting to feel silly standing in the hall in his robe, holding toothbrush and paste. He couldn't think of another thing to say to her.

“Are you going back to America soon?” she asked.

“No,” he said quickly, glad that she had broken the impasse. “I've got a job on the
Daily Post.
I'll be in England for another couple of months, but I'll be leaving here tomorrow . . . moving in with a friend in Soho.”

“That should be nice. I'm going down to Arundel tomorrow with Miss Alexandra.”

“That should be nice, too.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, looking away from him and starting off down the hall toward the garret stairs. “Good night, sir.”

Two of the girls in the room snored—loudly. Great fleshy lumps of girls, both Scots, strong as horses. They worked in the kitchen and their hands were beet red from being in water so much. They labored like navvies, and she didn't have the heart to wake them and tell them to turn over on their sides. The other two girls were Irish, parlormaids, sisters from Belfast. God's wrath couldn't have wakened them.

Ivy sat up in her narrow bed and then got out of it to stand by the window. She could see the dark shapes of a dozen pigeons on the chimney, huddled against the tall pots. There was hardly any sound of traffic. The city was asleep—or holding its breath on the brink of July.

Dear Mum and Da and my own dearest sisters Mary and Cissy and brothers Ned and Tom and our own dear baby Albert Edward. I am penning this to you in my thoughts on a hot night in London town. Tomorrow I go to Arundel to stay at the castle of a duke. I have met a very nice young American who is from Chicago, in the state of Illinois, on Lake Michigan as Tom will understand because we both know the atlas better than we know the streets of Illingsham. He is quite taken by me, I think, but bashful and shy and he knows his place. He wouldn't dare say, Ivy, may I go walking with you tomorrow? Or, Ivy, may I take you to the pictures on Saturday? After all, he is really nothing but an American boy with shabby suitcases and pajamas that are a bit thin in the knees. Tomorrow I go to Arundel to the castle of a duke. The plumbing, I believe, is sound. Every eligible bachelor in the world will be there, and I will startle them with my inexhaustible supply of starched aprons and crisp caps.

“Damn,” she said softly, staring out across the shadowed roof, the sleeping city. “Damn . . . damn . . . damn.”

7

Charles Greville emerged from the cool foyer of the Carlton Club and waited patiently in the afternoon heat for the doorman to signal a taxi. To anyone passing by he looked elegant, cool, and detached—attributes that one would expect of any man leaving the Carlton. Inside, he was seething. He had just left his father, and absolutely nothing had been resolved. They had had lunch together: Scotch grouse and a superb bottle of hock followed by fruit, cheese, and a hundred-year-old brandy. His father had waited for the brandy before toasting his birthday.

“To the twenty-third of July. The date of my son's birth. May it always be a day of sunshine.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Drink up, my boy. A true Napoleon.”

His father had been in a good mood. The season was beginning to wind down, more and more people were moving out of London, back to their country estates. He could decently do the same. Abingdon Pryory would be back in full swing by Bank Holiday.

“I tell you, Charles, I miss the horses, damned if I don't. Banks will have 'em in shape to suit Banks, but I like 'em a good deal leaner. I'll have to run the fat off them. And speaking of horses, my lad, why don't you come with me in September and ride in the Tetbury? Be like old times.”

“Perhaps I'll do that, Father.”

“Happy to hear it. By the way, thought you and Roger were planning to go to Greece this month.”

“We decided against it. Roger is preparing a book of his poems for publication . . . a slim book.”

“A fruitful summer, what? Did Alex tell you that she's finally made a choice?”

“No. How did she do it? Stick a pin into a list?”

“Something like that, I'd say. The chap's name is Saunders. Good-looking fellow. Went to Trinity. He's in the Foreign Office . . . Lord Esher's nephew and heir. Of course, that's her choice for
this
week, but I hope she stays with it.”

“So do I. And, Father, I've made up my mind to marry Lydia.”

How soft those words sounded to his ears, a melody. They had rung a different tune for his father, but he had said little. Merely sipped his brandy. Lit a cigarette.

“Oh? You know my feelings on that subject, Charles. The thought of your being Archie Foxe's son-in-law is most painful to me.”

“Because Archie's in trade?”

The earl had cradled his glass of brandy between his hands, sniffing the aroma. “Archie Foxe is an extremely successful shop-keeper. More power to the man. I don't hold that against him to any great extent. What I simply cannot abide about him is his contempt for the British class structure. Damned if I don't believe the man's a socialist at heart. And his closeness to Lloyd George and all that scruffy bunch of icon-smashing liberals is repellent to me. I'm sorry. Lydia has been welcome in my house since she was a child. I would never by thought or deed snub her because I disapprove of her father's views. But marriage? That is out of the question.”

“And if I marry her anyway, Father?” His voice had sounded tinny and ineffectual in the vastness of the dining room. He had studied his father's face but had discerned no drastic change of expression. He had looked, if anything, slightly bored.

“I do not wish to discuss the matter any further, Charles.” He had set his glass on the table and reached for the bottle. “Have another dollop of Napoleon . . . and try the
fromage de Brie.
It is quite delicious.”

The luncheon had dragged on interminably for Charles as several of his father's friends had come to the table and joined in the birthday toasts. But at last it had ended and he had taken his leave.

The taxi arrived and he slumped onto the back seat. Anger and frustration made him mute and it took several seconds to compose himself enough to give the driver directions. God, he agonized, what was he going to do? He felt like a man tied to two horses pulling in opposite directions. It was obvious that his father would not be pinned down as to what specific action he might take. He couldn't actually stop him from marrying Lydia, wouldn't create a scene and bar the church door, but he might let them both know in no uncertain terms that as far as he was concerned the marriage did not exist. A marriage between two strangers, a union that he would neither witness nor acknowledge. Would Mother forbid him from taking such baleful measures? And if she did, would Father be swayed by any of her arguments in his behalf? He squeezed his hands tightly until the knuckles ached. Everything was in doubt and it was impossible to get solid, concrete answers. Evade the issue, play for time—that was his parents' game. And what of Lydia? What in the name of all that was holy would be her reaction if he couldn't assure her that she was marrying into the family? No woman would wish to marry a man ostracized by his own father. He didn't quite believe her assurances that he was all she wanted. Acceptance by society was important to Lydia, and she couldn't be blamed for that.

He stared gloomily out of the window as the taxi turned into the Mall. The park had never looked so beautiful, the trees a startling shade of green against the sky, a sky almost impossibly blue for England. An Italian sky, the kind one saw in Amalfi in August. The red brick towers of St. James's rose above the trees and the guardsmen stood in front of their sentry boxes at Buckingham Palace. The Scots Guard, he noticed as the taxi swung past the palace toward Lower Belgrave Street.

The Earl of Stanmore's daughter-in-law.

He could only speculate on the importance of that relationship to Lydia. What doors would it open for her socially that no amount of Archie's millions could ever have breached? Lydia
Greville.
That name carried an almost indefinable aura of prestige and privilege. It meant garden parties and balls at homes where Lydia
Foxe
would not have been welcome or, at best, merely tolerated. It meant a final and irrevocable acceptance in even the most rarefield levels of society—provided, of course, that the union had been publicly blessed.

“God,” he whispered fiercely. What would she say if he had to tell her that it would not be blessed? That his father's presence at their wedding would be thunderously conspicuous by its absence? Would she smile, kiss him, tell him that it didn't matter in the slightest? He knew in his heart what her reaction would be and the thought turned his blood to ice. Lydia loved him—he had no doubt of that—but her love was based, at least in some measure, on his position in life. But what if he were wrong? What if she didn't give a tinker's damn about it and wanted a marriage, blessed or not? What then? Could he defy his father and run off with her? Toss away so casually every vestige of his sense of duty and obligation?

He felt that he was in the grip of a nightmare. His emotions were in such a whirl that when he arrived at his destination he handed the driver a five-pound note and told him to keep the change. The man drove off in a hurry before this madman could regain his senses.