The Uninvited Guests (8 page)

‘Do you think we might stick to the point, Mrs Trieves?’ Charlotte snapped. Her vagueness had all but disappeared. ‘My suggestion is this, and it’s not a revolutionary one: we will give them
all
cups of tea, Suttons, passengers and all. Surely we can find enough cups.’ She remembered her status. ‘Not my domain; I’ll leave it up to you, Mrs Trieves. And when we have spoken to the Railway we’ll have a clearer idea how inconvenienced we shall be, and for how long. Agreed?’

‘Tea?’ said Florence, tiredly, as it seemed to her the most labour-intensive and least productive substance on the earth. Boiling, steeping, assembling china, carrying things about, and for what? A feeble drink unchanged by passing through the body. She recalled having loved it once; now it was water to her. ‘Yes, I suppose,’ she said.

‘Yes, agreed, Mother.’

‘And we all need to keep a very sharp eye on the ornaments and trinkets: I don’t want to wave goodbye to the sorry lot of them and half the silver, too, so pass that on to the boy and guests, if you will. And we must at least cling to dignity. Heavens, I wish Edward were here.’

For the first time in the two years of knowing him Emerald, too, almost appreciated her stepfather – the idea of him, at least.

The three women left the pantry to see about appearing normal. Charlotte wrapped her stole around herself, Emerald lifted her old friend the russet tea-gown from the grease on the kitchen floor, and Florence rustled in her dreary black behind, to stay in the kitchen and get the water on for her enemy tea.

Charlotte shuddered as she and Emerald passed the morning-room, its door now firmly shut.

‘We must contact the Railway directly,’ she said. ‘Oh, but first
… the Suttons.
’

She said this last word in such tones of ghastliness that Emerald was forced to remark, ‘You might be nicer to Patience, Mother; she can see you despise her.’

‘Despise her? Whatever do you mean? I very much admire the Modern Female Academic. I’m not sure little Patience quite fits my preconception, but her mind is likely as sharp as a little rat-trap once she stops simpering.’

‘Oh, Mother!’

They were interrupted by a shout of laughter from behind the closed door, causing both women to leap sideways like startled ponies.

‘What on earth?’ Charlotte was pale.

‘Dare we look?’

‘Lord, I suppose they’re going to be rowdy and unmanageable now they’re warming up and realising their good fortune.’

‘Must you speak so damningly about everybody? They’ve had a terrible ordeal!’ blazed Emerald and, distancing herself from her mother, she opened the morning room door, defiantly generous.

‘Everything to your satisfaction?’ she enquired gaily, but whoever had laughed was now struck dumb.

They even drew back from her, as if she were going to reprimand them. It was hard to imagine the raucous laugh had issued from this still and staring mass. They seemed beyond speech.

Emerald glanced over her shoulder for support, but Charlotte, predictably, had disappeared; Emerald caught sight of her treacherous back as she darted away around the corner.

She looked about the faces turned towards her. On the drive there had seemed fewer of them, ten perhaps, now there was more like twelve or fourteen – but she couldn’t count heads and speak at the same time and she didn’t want to appear rude.

‘Myrtle is going to bring tea for you,’ she announced.

‘Thank you,’ uttered a man with his hands held out towards the raw fire. He had a woman at his side who might have been his wife, and she spoke next.

‘Any word from the Railway?’ she said, and another put in, ‘They didn’t say how long it would be.’ And another whispered urgently, ‘We really must get on,’ to which a few
yeses
and
ayes
were added.

‘I am about to telephone them. I shall let you know directly. I do apologise for … your delay.’ She felt like a railway employee herself, saying it, but she didn’t know what else
to
say. She took a step backwards and shut the door again, firmly.

Harsh judgements aside, they were an unnerving lot, and she hoped they wouldn’t come
spilling out.

She reached the hall where her cowardly mother was lurking on the stairs.

‘I’m going to my room.’

‘What about the Suttons?’ hissed Emerald, indicating the library door.

‘I’ve no idea, Emerald: you see to them.’

Emerald was an intuitive young woman. She saw through her mother’s glib pretence and attempted to put aside her own dismay at being deserted by her parent to say kindly, ‘It’s all right, you know, Mother; it doesn’t matter.’

‘Whatever can you mean?’ responded Charlotte irritably.

‘All these people; honestly, Mother, the Suttons don’t mind.’

Charlotte paused, her hand still on the banister. ‘Emerald,’ she said icily, ‘if you imagine I care a fig for what Insignificance Sutton or her owlish brother think—’

‘Here, sh!’ Emerald glanced guiltily towards the closed door. ‘Come away – go up!’

They scuttled up the stairs and Emerald led her mother firmly to the safety of her bedroom door, where she continued, in a low voice, ‘I do think you care a fig. I think you care a great many figs. Camilla Sutton was part of what you always dotingly describe as your wonderfully conventional childhood—’ She broke off. ‘Why didn’t she come, incidentally?’

‘Oh, she sent a rotten telegram. Something about flu. I shouldn’t think that was it for a
minute.
’

‘You might have told me. Ernest doesn’t look a bit like her. Why would she lie?’

Charlotte had balled her handkerchief again, and now plucked at it, distractedly, a child, fidgeting to get away, forced to respond, and petulant.

‘How should I know? Perhaps she despises me. Having no money. Marrying Edward.’

Emerald squirmed under the weight of these confidences. She ought to entertain the Suttons, she must telephone the Railway – yet here she was, once more forced to support her drooping, weak-stemmed, climbing vine of a sun-seeking mother. She drew a steadying breath.

‘Ma, Edward is a fine barrister. I should think he is a very respectable person to have married.’ Now she found herself defending her stepfather; his absence in a crisis was doing her view of him no end of good.

‘Yes, but – well, you know – his arm … and nobody knows him. And she’s one of the bridge and calling-cards set, and seems to be connected to very high-born types. And I’m … well, I’m not.’

‘But you never have been, Mother. I’m surprised you should suddenly mind now.’

‘I just mind her throwing me over, and then sending out her tedious little spies to see what we’re up to, and then we’re up to
this –
these people! It’s humiliating.’

‘Those tedious little spies, as you call them,’ said Emerald hotly, ‘happen to be my good friend Patience – who may be as conventional as a box of bricks, but is also perfectly sweet. And her brother, who is—’ she faltered, ‘– too, and another perfectly fine person.’

Charlotte became vague.

‘Oh, Emerald, they’re divine. I’m going to lie down and think what can be done.’

‘Well, Mother, you go on. Only –
please
don’t worry. I shall telephone the Railway, all those people will be gone soon, and we’ll have the most dignified supper you ever saw. And don’t forget, John Buchanan is coming!’

She could have kicked herself for getting her mother’s hopes up in the John Buchanan department, but Charlotte smiled her most loving smile at her.

‘So he is,’ she said and went off into her room mollified. ‘Keep an eye on the silver!’ was her last instruction, muffled by the door.

Emerald hurried back downstairs to see to the Suttons.
Out of sight, out of mind
, she comforted herself, regarding her parent, but she may as well have been speaking about the poor, shocked passengers, for in her haste to fulfil her duties, like Myrtle, she had clean forgotten them, and altogether overlooked the necessity of telephoning the Railway. She did not stop to consider that the morning room was not large, or that the fire that warmed the passengers might be dying.

Whilst Charlotte remained in her room with her mere dreams of etiquette, Emerald, stalwart, practised it, entertaining Ernest and Patience in the library despite unusual events, displaced passengers and Clovis’s sulks. Having obliged by fetching back the grooms, he now felt he had carte blanche to be blackish.

‘Can’t tell if it’s nighttime now, or just
weather
,’ he said, flinging himself onto the window seat and glancing askance at the squally afternoon.

The fire, neglected, had sunk down onto itself. Ernest threw apple logs onto it, and wrestled with the coal scuttle as Emerald poured the tea (brought in by Myrtle, who badly needed a change of apron after lighting the morning room fire, but had not yet seen to it).

Smudge had not been able to drag herself away to dress and knelt slavishly at Patience’s feet, gazing up at her. Patience stared into the flames and allowed her face to relax the expression of keen enthusiasm she routinely maintained. Exhaustion swept through her tiny frame.

‘I must say I’m relieved we didn’t die in a train crash,’ she said.

Emerald smiled at her. ‘I am, too, Patience; it would have quite spoilt my party,’ she said, and handed her a cup of tea.

‘Thank you. I wonder if anybody
did die!
’ said Patience gloomily, wrinkling her delicate brow. The china cup trembled against the saucer.

There came a rumbling sound from near the window.

‘Did you utter, dear brother?’ said Emerald, fixing Clovis with what she hoped was a granite look.

‘I said,’ Clovis shook himself violently, like a wet dog and sat up, ‘“Has that only just occurred to you now?” Whether anybody perished, that is.’

Patience and Emerald exchanged glances. ‘We haven’t exactly had much opportunity to talk about it!’ said Patience and turned her small shoulders pointedly away from him.

‘
Brrr!
’ exclaimed Clovis, shivering dramatically and making them all jump.

‘I should think,’ began Ernest in a measured tone, ‘that when the railway fellow said “a dreadful accident” he must have been referring to fatalities. Injuries, at least.’

‘Yes,’ said Patience. ‘The porter
did
say “dreadful”; one can only imagine the worst…’

Clovis ignored Ernest to continue baiting Patience.

‘The
guard
didn’t give us any other details, though, Miss Sutton. Did he? You’re merely guessing.’

Patience was slapped down, but only momentarily: she was two years older than Clovis and had decided he wasn’t to be considered as a potential attachment. There were plenty of older, more serious men who liked her at home in Berkshire and at Cambridge, where she had recently begun to read History, and she had no designs whatsoever on the boy Clovis Torrington. Still, she was disconcerted how often her thoughts hovered tremblingly around his fledgling Romantic looks – even during the years they had not seen one another. When last they had met, she had been a cheerful seventeen and he, at fifteen, boisterous and fair. She did not count his father’s funeral as a visit, but even at that sad occasion she had felt an unsettling urge to stroke him, to put her arms around him. At the time she had put it down to sisterly compassion, but now her fluttering pulse gave the lie to that rationale.

History and the heart notwithstanding, the balance of power, Patience decided, remained firmly with her. After all, he couldn’t read her mind and wasn’t to know how arresting she found him to look at.

She glanced away, saying warmly, ‘Oh, well done, Ernest.’ The fire was once more throwing dazzling flames into the wide chimney. Ernest sat down.

‘You should have seen to the fire, Clovis,’ Emerald said tightly. He was belligerent.

‘What on earth do we keep servants for?’

Emerald resisted biting him hard on the nose. She had made a promise not to quarrel with her brother in front of the guests but he was so extremely vexing she wasn’t sure she could keep it.

‘It was awfully good of you,’ she said to Ernest sweetly.

‘Not at all,’ he answered, dusting off his knees. She noticed, sympathetically, that he was a little too large for the chair, which was a button-seated affair, with short mahogany legs like a Dachshund.

Looking at him now, as she did, fleetingly, from beneath her lashes, she found that contrary to her earlier impression, she could easily recognise the boy she had known. The not-unpleasingly asymmetrical face, narrow in childhood, had grown into the aquiline nose and square jaw that in skinny youth had dominated it. The garish hair had darkened to a deep brownish-red, but the eyes, that had been, it’s true, before the enforced wearing of a patch, disconcertingly at odds with one another, were still – she risked another glance – frustratingly unknowable. Hidden behind glass, they had been a mystery to her as long as she’d known him; she had never wondered about them until now. Ernest himself affected not to notice her scrutiny but inwardly he smarted beneath her gaze, that, even tempered by soft lashes and quick looks, blazed. ‘Oh, lord,’ he thought; helplessly, ‘She’s laughing at me.’

‘There’s a hiding place in this room, isn’t there?’ said Patience suddenly.

‘You remember!’ Emerald smiled, the memory of childhood games of hide-and-seek easing the adult tensions now prevalent.

‘I remember there
was
one …’ Patience glanced about her at the walls and shelves.

The library – panelled and polished – was the most pleasing room imaginable. When Charlotte and Horace had first come to Sterne (Charlotte hauling, wheeling or otherwise transporting the squally, lace-bound baby Emerald), the library had been used as a billiard room, and the shelves held a collection of vile majolica, or were otherwise desecrated. The Torringtons blamed the Victorians and set about fulfilling the room’s proper destiny, initially with a hundred-odd favourite books from their previous (suburban, undistinguished) house, and then with a trickle of honoured additions from thrilling visits to auction houses. In later, leaner years, equally satisfying forays into fluff-cornered antiquarian bookshops filled the gleaming room to the brim.