The Visitors (38 page)

What had happened? I
had
grown; I’d put on weight, but only in one small area of my body. What was wrong with my
chest
? I tried breathing in and out; when I was gasping for air, I could manage six more buttons. The final four simply would not do up. I ran weeping to Wheeler. ‘What’s happened? Oh, what’s happened,
Wheeler?’ I cried. ‘If I starve myself for the next two weeks, will it fit again?’

Wheeler might have explained: looking back now, I can see she considered that possibility and rejected it; perhaps she saw that the issue might lead on to other biological inevitabilities, and such difficult topics were best avoided. I saw something – a wariness – flash across her face, but it quickly returned to Easter Island impassivity. ‘What a great fuss about nothing,’ she said. ‘You see those darts in the bodice? Let them out and it’ll fit again right as rain. No problem there!’ She made the adjustments and returned the dress to me that night. I tried it on. It fitted.

I didn’t mention these difficulties to Nicola Dunsire when I answered her letter. I told her I’d be wearing her dress for Rose’s birthday. I told her how lovingly it had been inspected by an expert in the field:
Wheeler approves!
I thought that would please her. I told her Mr Carter was arriving soon, that I had seen Lady Evelyn and might visit Highclere, that Peter and I had caught two trout, that I’d seen a sparrowhawk, was doing my homework, and – as instructed – had been learning some poems by heart.

Rose and I had chosen Tennyson’s
The Lady of Shalott
: we both loved its rhythms, its rhymes, its tale of enchantment and love’s appalling fatalities. It was long, but we mastered it all, and used to chant it as we climbed the high blue hills beyond the farm. Even Peter learned some lines, and would join in at key points:
She left the
WEB
, she left the
LOOM
/ She made three paces through the
ROOM
/ She looked down to
CAMELOT
.
Looking down at the distant towers of Highclere Castle, we’d shout these lines from the hilltops. We also liked,
Out flew the web and floated wide/ The mirror
CRACK
’
D
from side to side/ ‘The
CURSE
is come upon me,’ cried/ The Lady of Shalott…

Tennyson’s best line, we agreed, and the proof of his sublime genius, was our favourite:
The CURSE is come upon MEEE
.
We yelled that, and sometimes wailed it, banshee-manner, clutching our sides, rolling on the ground; once, we howled it, all three of us in unison, so loudly that Lord Carnarvon must have heard us in his castle three miles away.

We overdid it that time, and Peter, who didn’t understand curses, began to tremble. ‘But what
is
it? What did it
do
?’ he asked in a little voice. ‘Oh, Lucy – does it dead you?’

Had Frances been there, she’d have told him curses were terrible things: inescapable, irreversible and eternal. Six months later – by which time Carter, Lord Carnarvon and tales of Egyptian curses would be on the front pages of newspapers worldwide; by which time my own life would be changed in ways I’d never foreseen – I might have felt Frances had a point; I was certainly considering the nature and origin of curses, and I still do. But that day Rose and I were anxious to prevent nightmares, afraid Peter might begin asking about his mother again; and so, improvising fast, we explained curses were nothing to fear. They were a passing affliction. They were quickly cured – like chickenpox. And anyway, they didn’t happen, they belonged to fairy tales, they were the stuff of fiction.

‘I don’t expect your poet friend Eddie would approve our taste in verse!’ I wrote to Nicola Dunsire, describing this episode. ‘Given his views on the immortal Alfred!’ I did try to be sophisticated when I wrote; I thought this was a passable witticism. Miss Dunsire could not have agreed; nor did my other news seem to engage her, for she never commented on anything I told her, and she never answered any questions I asked. I received many letters from her over the next weeks, they flew in with astonishing regularity, on the dot, one every three days. She kept me up to date with her own activities and those of her bluestocking friends. She kept me posted as to her deepening fascination with M. Swann… and what a disappointment there! I’d finally realised that Swann was not a real man, as I’d half hoped, half feared – he was merely a character in a novel.

But not once, not once, did Nicola Dunsire respond to anything I wrote in my letters. Maybe she just tossed them aside unread? Maybe Rose, Peter, Wheeler and I were of no interest to her. I was wounded by this deafening silence. I confessed that.

‘Miss Manners could teach her a thing or two.
Self-centred
,’ pronounced Wheeler.

23

‘Eve, may I ask you a question – what does SA mean?’ I asked as Eve and I were having our ‘slap-up’ lunch.

It was market day at the small Austenish town of Alresford, and as we could not, of course, enter a public house, Eve had made other arrangements. We were eating a Highclere Castle picnic, sitting by the river below the town, overlooking the watercress beds for which it was famous. We’d had foie gras sandwiches and slices of partridge pie. We were munching apples and sipping cold lemonade. Eve had been staring dreamily at the river for some while – in a Lady of Shalott manner, I thought:
Tirra lirra, by the river/ Sang Sir Lancelot.
Now she roused herself.

‘SA stands for sex appeal, Lucy,’ she replied – the great thing about Eve was that if you asked her a question, she answered it. ‘It means you’re madly alluring to the opposite sex. A man can have SA, or a woman. And it doesn’t mean that they’re handsome or pretty – not necessarily. It just means they have this irresistible, magical power to
attract.
Poor darling Poppy had it, for instance… ’ A shadow passed across her face. ‘I
don’t
have it – and I used to mind and wish I did. But now I think I’m safer without it.’ She stuffed the last things back in the picnic basket. ‘Right, one final try for these presents. We’re not getting on very well, are we? Before we head for home, shall we try the market?’

We did so. The shops at Alresford had proved a disappointment: had we wanted to buy Rose some ironmongery, a teapot or a whalebone corset, they might have helped, but not otherwise. The market looked more promising. We wandered between the stalls, admiring the bowls of eggs, the hand-made cheeses, the wooden toys whittled on farms as a sideline industry, the hand-knitted baby clothes being sold by farmers’ wives for pin money. I was considering the nature of SA, the fact that Miss Dunsire (according to Rose) had it, and Eve (according to her) did not. Eve, wearing a pale pink frock, pretty, smiling and courteous, recognised and greeted on all sides with doffed caps and curtseys, was as charming that day as I could imagine any woman’s being. The differing appeal of Mrs d’Erlanger and Miss Dunsire remained mysterious. When I was a grown woman, would I ever resemble Poppy or Nicola? I couldn’t imagine that. I’d have to settle for safety, I decided.

Clutching my money, I inspected the stalls. It did seem that Eve had been right and my florin was enough: it would easily have bought a wooden train or a knitted doll or a crocheted shawl – objects someone must have laboured over for days; but none of these things would appeal to Rose. We walked on, past the gypsy women selling lucky heather, the gypsy fortune-teller reading palms – Eve scurried past him, and I remembered Howard Carter’s story of Carnarvon’s seances and how much they had frightened her. Eve bought some little things – a rose-pink sash, a corn dolly. I couldn’t find anything suitable, until, as we reached the outskirts of the market, I saw a man with two large mewling baskets; one contained puppies, the other kittens. Rose loved animals.

I drew Eve aside and we debated: cats versus dogs, possible prices. Eve recognised the man, who’d once been a ditch-digger on the Carnarvon estate and a beater on shoots; he had been dismissed, she said, and was now famous in the district as a drinker, poacher and general ne’er-do-well. We returned to the stall. Eve asked about price. ‘Kittens, a tanner apiece. Dogs ditto. As it’s your ladyship… Got to get rid of ’em.’ The man heaved a sigh. ‘Otherwise it’s into a sack, and into the water-butt with ’em.’

‘What nonsense, Fletcher,’ Eve replied coldly. ‘We both know you’ll be taking them on to Winchester market in two days’ time, and if you don’t sell them here you’ll certainly sell them there. What do you think, Lucy?’

I was inclining to the dogs; I asked what kind they were.

‘
Kind?
’ He scratched his head. ‘Well, that’s ’ard to say, miss. My bitch got out, and I couldn’t rightly say as to the father. There’s terrier in there, good blood, a fine ratter their ma was – but as to their
pa…
Foxhound? Collie? Bulldog? Got a foreign look to ’em, a lapdog look. Bit of French poodle maybe? They look kind of woolly, see?’

He plucked a puppy from the basket and held it up by the scruff of its neck; it squealed. It had dirty matted black and white fur and terrified milky-blue eyes. ‘For goodness’ sake, Fletcher,’ Eve said, ‘those puppies are virtually newborn – a few days at most. They should be with their mother for
weeks
yet.’

‘Died.’ He grimaced. ‘Ten of ’em, see, milady. Too much for ’er. Gettin’ on, the old bitch was, and when the last one come out dead, covered in blood, no bigger than your thumb, I knowed what was coming, and––’

‘Yes, yes – that’s quite enough, Fletcher.’

‘How much are the leads and the collars?’ I asked – there were several of these on sale too, and I had my eye on the red ones. Red was Rose’s favourite colour.

‘Ah, now you’re talking, miss,’ Fletcher said, brightening. ‘Tip-top leather, nice brass buckle – two shillings for the collar and one shilling for the lead, which makes three and sixpence
with
one of these fine little dogs ’ere, but as I knows ’er ladyship of old, miss, let’s say three shillings.’

‘No, let’s say one shilling all in,’ I replied. Eve coughed.

‘Are we talking dog or bitch, miss? The bitches is more valuable, see? But ’arder to train. In my experience.’

‘That one, please, Mr Fletcher.’ I pointed to the one he held. ‘And how does one feed it?’

‘Baby’s bottle and milk, miss. Guzzles it down. You knows your dogs, I see. A fine bitch. Two and ninepence –
with
the collar and lead, and I call that generous.’

‘One shilling and sixpence,’ I said, trying to hide my mounting desperation. ‘I only have two shillings, you see, and I’ll have to buy a bottle as well. That’s – my final figure.’

I showed Fletcher my florin. By then I wanted to rescue the dog badly and, disobeying the international laws of dealing, I was making that only too obvious. To my surprise and relief, Fletcher gave in with alacrity. He winked, spat on his hand, shook mine, and bundled the puppy into a brown paper bag. With my remaining sixpence Eve and I bought a baby’s bottle and teats and then set off for Highclere in her car, top down, wind blowing in our faces. The little dog lay in my lap, trembling.

‘I can’t believe you did that, Lucy,’ Eve said. ‘What an adventure – wait till I tell Pups! Fletcher has twelve children and lives in this disgusting filthy shack – you can’t begin to
count
the pheasants and rabbits Pups has lost to him. He’s up before the magistrates for poaching every other week, and the sob-stories he tells! “Who’d begrudge me one little rabbit, Your Honour, when my kiddies ain’t eaten in weeks.”’ Eve, who was a poor mimic, did a whining, clown-like Hampshire accent. ‘The truth, of course, is that he drinks – and that’s where your one and sixpence will go… He’s
such
a rogue.’

I considered this analysis. According to Rose, Lord Carnarvon expected to bag a thousand birds a day on his pheasant shoots. Ditto rabbits. I said nothing. The puppy whimpered.

One of Highclere Castle’s lodges and castellated gates came into view. Eve accelerated up the winding drive: it was a mile long, Rose had told me. The parkland through which it passed had been laid out by Capability Brown; the great cedars I could see ahead of us had been planted in the 1790s by a previous earl, one with botanical inclinations.

‘What’s more,’ Eve continued, changing gear, ‘Fletcher’s obstinate, and he usually drives a
very
hard bargain. He must have liked you, Lucy. I was fearing the worst. Daylight robbery, but I thought he’d be
sure
to stick at two and ninepence.’

By the time we reached the house itself, and I saw it for the first time in all its vastness and grandeur, I realised that I’d created a problem. By then, the little dog had peed on my dress, woken up, scratched and, trembling, gone to sleep again. Its vigorous scratching was as infectious as a yawn – it made me itchy too. I was supposed to be joining Rose and Peter inside for tea, for the tour of Lord Carnarvon’s Egyptian treasures. Glancing up at Highclere’s massed façade, its towers, its ranked windows, I realised belatedly that this puppy did not belong in this palace, and I didn’t either – not with the spreading wet stain on my skirt, and the powerful smell that was now emanating from me, a smell that was part pee and part unwashed dogginess. This odour became obvious the second Eve stopped the car. ‘Oh Lord,’ Eve said. We had a hurried consultation.

We’d already agreed that the puppy would be given to Rose today, with the lead and collar kept for her birthday. But what to do with it now? Eve felt the dog could be whisked away to the kitchen quarters or the stables until the time came for us to leave – ‘Streatfield will deal with it,’ she said, indicating a stately man who was descending the steps and advancing upon us. Scarlet with embarrassment, I vetoed that; the thought of the little dog peeing on Carnarvon’s butler was humiliating; besides, it was frightened and I didn’t intend to be parted from it.