This Real Night (8 page)

‘I do not remember that,’ Mr Morpurgo answered pleasantly enough. ‘But very well, go. We will get on very well by ourselves. I have sent for Mr Kessel and he will look after us, and Mr Weissbach,’ he said smiling, ‘can fill in the gaps. So you and the girls can say goodbye, and go off to give the poor horses what you might have given to us.’

‘I need not go this minute,’ said Mrs Morpurgo, suddenly timid.

‘Oh, you had better not wait any longer,’ her husband told her. ‘Gunnersbury Park is certainly a long way off, as you say, and if you leave later you may disturb the Aubreys when they have settled down to looking at the things.’

When she and her daughters had left, the time and the place came to their own. We became aware of a fine day looking in at the windows, and of the great ugly, competently capacious house which pretended to be a palace, but was something better, a complex of store cupboards stocked with celestial sorts of jam. ‘My father and mother collected all sorts of things, but hardly any pictures except what they brought back from the Continent when they’d been travelling; the rest I’ve found,’ said Mr Morpurgo comfortably. ‘But I keep up the original collections, I even add to them, I like to keep things going. One must,’ he sighed, ‘keep things going. There are the bronzes, I’m fond of the bronzes. They’re all over the house. When you see a bronze about, Rose, go up and look at it, it’s probably good. There’s a copy of a classical Andromeda by a man called Bonacolsi Antico who worked at Mantua, and that’s something more than the original. And I’ve got a room full of prints, but I don’t believe you’d care for them, though probably that’s because I don’t care for them myself. My father loved them, but then he loved technicalities and I hate them. The first impression, the second impression, the third impression, it puts one in touch with the artist’s troubles. I like objects which pretend to have been laid like an egg. Don’t you agree, Weissbach?’

‘I do indeed,’ said Mr Weissbach. But he was in a state to agree to anything. As soon as he had been given his coffee-cup he had sat down next to Cordelia, and had minute by minute grown more rosy and contented, while she had assumed the character which had been hers on the concert platform, and became a remote and dreaming child, unaware of her own loveliness, and terrified lest someone should be unkind to her, since, so far as she knew, she had no claim on the world’s kindness. He rose and said to Mamma, ‘With your permission I am going to take Miss Cordelia - what a lovely name! - into the next room and show her the English porcelain.’ Mamma assented without enthusiasm and indeed uttered a faint moan when he turned as he led Cordelia over the threshold and said richly, ‘I feel I’m doing something most appropriate, there are at least two charming figures here which are quite in Miss Cordelia’s style.’

Then the footman returned with Mr Kessel, who was a little old man in a black suit, who bowed obsequiously to Mr Morpurgo and then fixed him with a small tyrannical eye. No, he had not brought the Gentile de Fabriano, he had not been sure that that was really the picture which was wanted. He was sullen as a child asked to share his toys. As he turned to go back for it, the footman began to put up the easel and Mr Morpurgo asked if it could be set nearer Mamma so that she would not have to leave the sofa when the picture came. Mr Kessel paused on the threshold to say that the footman had been placing the easel on the very spot at which, as had been established by experiments he had carried on during the first five years after the house was built, a picture could be shown to best advantage, and if Mr Morpurgo had any reason to think that there was a better spot he would be glad to know it. Mr Morpurgo said quickly that it did not matter where the easel was, and Mamma said she could easily move, but the young footman was annoyed, he clicked his tongue before he could stop himself.

As soon as Mr Kessel had gone, Mr Morpurgo said in an undertone to the footman, ‘Ah, Lawrence, you must remember that you will be old some day,’ and when we were alone he sighed, ‘What am I to do with Kessel? He is a pest about the house, and I do not know what to do with him. It is an odd story. He is a Russian of German descent, the great-great-grandson of a Dresden silversmith who went to Russia in a party of craftsmen imported by Peter the Great. But I cannot send him back to Russia, for it is forty years since he left it and nobody he knew will be alive. He worked at his hereditary craft at Fabergé’s, and then was sent over here to bring the Russian Embassy a new set of table silver Fabergé had made for it, and to do some repairs to a famous silver table equipage they had, a glorious thing with elephants. He liked England so well that he decided to stay here, and worked for Spink’s for a time, and got interested in all sorts of works of art outside his own line, and presently came to my father and mother to look after their collections. That was while we still had our old house in Portman Square. I wish we had never left it. I have told you why my father built this barrack, and it has to be respected, yet I have never felt life to be very lucky here. But what has amused me always about Kessel’s story is that he decided to stay in England after a fortnight spent in Stoke Newington, where the Russian Embassy boarded him out so that he could be near some special workshop. I think this must be the sole occasion when the charms of Stoke Newington have detached a single soul from its allegiance to its native land. But what a fool I am! Kessel probably stayed here not because he liked London, but because something had happened to him which made him dislike St Petersburg. Clare, why are you tearing yourself in two by trying to listen to what I say and at the same time give the most frenzied attention to what you can see in the mirror?’

‘Edgar, you must forgive me,’ breathed Mamma, ‘I am sorry for that poor old Russian and it is wonderful to hear how careful you are for all your people, but the door to the next room is open, and I can see the reflection of Cordelia and Mr Weissbach, and I feel I ought not to take my eyes off them; he may be very nice, I am sure he is very nice, but he is so remarkably like King Edward.’

‘Clare, Clare,’ laughed Mr Morpurgo, ‘you don’t understand your children. You know that Cordelia is a very proper little girl, but not I think that she is also a little prizefighter in disguise, who would knock Mr Weissbach into the ropes if he offended her sense of propriety, and would have done the same by King Edward if he had earned it. But Mr Weissbach won’t do anything he shouldn’t because he hopes to sell me a great many more pictures. Cordelia’s virtue is being safeguarded not only by her own ferocity, but by a number of long dead Florentines and Siennese, who might not have been on that side had they been still alive. But I’ll sit beside you and watch them, just in case poor Weissbach should forget himself and have two ribs and a collar-bone broken.’

He poured himself out another cup of coffee and sat down on the sofa, still laughing. ‘Clare, it is so pleasant to be with you, I forget all my troubles. This is just like the very first day I met your mother, Rose. She cheered me up then when I was feeling very sad. Has she ever told you about it?’

‘No, please tell me now,’ I answered with avidity, and Mamma leaned forward eagerly. He was constantly alluding to his first meeting with her, and she retained no recollection of it whatsoever. But we were never to be enlightened. Mrs Morpurgo was with us again.

‘Sit down, my dear,’ said her husband.

She remained standing. ‘I wanted,’ she said hesitantly, ‘to explain something that may have puzzled you at luncheon.’

‘I don’t remember anything happening at luncheon which I didn’t perfectly understand,’ said Mr Morpurgo.

‘The girls were giggling,’ said Mrs Morpurgo, sadly.

‘Why, Herminie, you should not have bothered to come back to talk of this!’ He looked up at her tenderly. He could not bear her to be sad. ‘Yes, the girls were giggling, and I did not like it. They had some private joke, and I suspected it was an unkind one. But there was no reason for you to give it another thought.’

‘But I wanted to explain what it was all about,’ said his wife. ‘I knew you would be annoyed, who wouldn’t have been? But it was just a piece of schoolgirlish nonsense. Marguerite and Marie Louise have been teasing Stephanie for months because they said she had fallen in love with this Captain Ware. He was a handsome fellow. In his way. And they pretended that she was upset when he suddenly announced that he was getting married. But of course there was nothing in it at all. Nothing.’

Mr Morpurgo made no reply, and Mrs Morpurgo continued to stand beside us, swaying backwards and forwards on her high heels. ‘I thought I had better tell you what was behind it all,’ she said.

‘Will you not sit down, Herminie, my dear?’ said Mr Morpurgo at last. ‘I am sorry you have vexed yourself about this business. You are wrong, quite wrong, in thinking that I had not grasped what had happened. Handsome riding masters have always existed and will always exist, and they have a right to existence, because they redress the balance of nature, which swings too much the other way. There are so many men like me who are not handsome, and do not become any better looking when they get on a horse. I assure you that I am not angry with Stephanie for her flight of fancy. It was most natural. I am only sorry that she should have suffered some distress. For I know quite well that you are not telling me the truth.’

Mrs Morpurgo stared at him with protruding eyes.

‘I think Stephanie was in love with Captain Ware,’ said Mr Morpurgo.

‘There was nothing in it,’ repeated Mrs Morpurgo.

‘That is what I think, too,’ said Mr Morpurgo, smiling. ‘There was nothing in it. But my poor girl was in love with her riding master. And such things are nothing.’

She continued to look at him doubtfully, swaying backwards and forwards.

‘Herminie,’ said Mr Morpurgo, speaking slowly, with spaces between the words, in much the same manner that our mathematics mistress used towards her most backward pupils, ‘I assure you, there is no need to concern yourself with this business any longer, so far as I am concerned. There are some things so sad that when they happen to people one cares for one cannot be angry about them. I mean to forget that I ever heard Captain Ware’s name, and I hope Stephanie will soon forget it too. My only sorrow is that she will take longer to forget him than I will. For I know that such disappointments take their own time to heal.’

His wife still said nothing, and he sighed and went on: ‘Now come and sit down with us. I will send Manning to ask Mademoiselle to take the girls to Gunnersbury House without you, and I shall have the pleasure of your company, which I missed so much when you were at Pau.’

‘I cannot do that,’ said Mrs Morpurgo. She was perplexed. Surely there was a second meaning in what he was saying? She had better leave him as quickly as possible before she got caught up in his incomprehensibility. She bounced back into the part of a woman of the world. ‘Lady Rothschild will be expecting me, what’s the use of offending people, one’s got to live with them.’

‘People will eat strawberries and cream off glass plates in a marquee as well without you as with you,’ said Mr Morpurgo. ‘But Mrs Aubrey and Rose and I will not be nearly as happy sitting here unless you are with us.’

Mrs Morpurgo resorted again to her affectation of surprise. ‘I’m charmed,’ she told Mamma, ‘that my husband should have this passion for my company. But I wonder why it should choose to burn so fiercely just this afternoon of all afternoons, when my friends are waiting for me miles away.’

‘This point is,’ said Mr Morpurgo drily, ‘that this is indeed an afternoon of afternoons.’

She was the dull pupil again, staring at the blackboard.

‘Not,’ he said, more drily still, ‘that anything has happened which has not happened before. But we are going to behave as if nothing had happened, and as if Stephanie had not been more foolish than I have a right to expect.’

‘I have told you that there was nothing in it,’ she said again, perplexed.

‘Yes. Yes. I accept that,’ he said. ‘And now sit down, my dear. First I want to show the Aubreys some of our things, and then it would be kind of you to show them your pictures and your drawing-room, which I know they did not have the time to look at before luncheon. Then they will be going home to Lovegrove, and you and I can have the end of the afternoon to spend together.’

A look of fear passed over her face. ‘I have told you,’ she said, ‘Lady Rothschild telephoned to me more than once. She wants me to do something special, at this wretched fête.’

‘The end of the afternoon is always pleasant,’ said Mr Morpurgo, ‘and we will talk of nothing troublesome. We will be beautifully vacant, like two horses in a meadow.’

‘Two horses!’ said Mrs Morpurgo. ‘That would be delightful, no doubt. And the Rothschilds would love us all the better for it. But we’re not horses, my dear Edgar, and we have duties horses haven’t got.’

‘You will not stay with me though I particularly want you to?’ asked her husband.

‘If I may talk of my plans,’ said Mamma, while Mrs Morpurgo shook her head, ‘I think that, lovely as your house is, and much as we are enjoying being here, we will not take up so much of your husband’s time as he proposes.’ Her face lit up with amusement. ‘I resemble Lady Rothschild in one respect, and in one respect only. I also live a long way off. I think we should be going home at once.’

‘No, not at once,’ said Mr Morpurgo. ‘Your home is quite a distance away, but you have plenty of time, Clare. It is Herminie who is running short of that.’

‘Yes, I spend my days hurrying from pillar to post,’ said Mrs Morpurgo. ‘That is what I am always complaining about, and I will not make things any better by breaking engagements.’

‘You have less time at your disposal than you realise,’ said Mr Morpurgo. ‘Will you stay with me this afternoon or will you not?’

He had till then been speaking in quiet and even tones, but now his voice was thin and strained, an odd voice to come from so fat a little man. Now Mrs Morpurgo lost her perplexity, now she was sure of her ground. Requests coming from the bottom of the heart were things one refused. ‘I’ve already made it clear, dear Edgar,’ she said triumphantly, ‘that Gunnersbury House is where I’ve promised I’ll be this afternoon, and like all good women, I keep my promises.’