Too Close to the Sun (53 page)

It was so easy for Grace to see the late Mrs Spencer in her little house, sitting over her easel. She could picture it all, so clearly see the scene.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘aren’t you going to ask how it happened? How we met?’

Grace did not need to ask; she had already learned an answer to this. She could recall the exact moment when Mrs Spencer had told her. But Edward was insistent; he wanted to tell her his own version.

‘Don’t you want to know how it happened?’ he said. ‘I was no sluggard, I can tell you. No great general could have come up with a better strategy.’

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me how it happened, your meeting with her.’

He gave a little sigh that smacked of self-satisfaction. ‘Well, by a stroke of luck I found out that there was to be an exhibition of paintings done by local artists – from Corster and the surrounding areas – and one of the exhibitors was to be Miss Eleanor Addison. It was written up in the papers. The exhibition was to be held in Swindon at the town hall.
So as soon as it opened I wasted no time in going to see it. I got there on the first day. She had three paintings on show. I bought all three. And it went on from there. I wrote to her and said I’d like to see other examples of her work, and I was invited to call on her.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s how it began.’

‘Did you – did you tell her that you knew about her having inherited Asterleigh, and the mill?’

‘No. Not at first. I did a little later. I had to. One could not make many enquiries without being informed of it. I mean to say that it was fairly common knowledge, and it would have looked rather suspicious if I’d still pretended not to know.’

‘So – you were married.’

‘So, eventually, we were married.’

Grace, knowing part of the story, half-feared to continue listening, but heard herself say, ‘Were you happy?’

‘Me? Happy? I had the house, didn’t I?’

She shrank from the callousness of the sentiment, the matter-of-fact tone in his voice. ‘Is that all it meant to you?’ she said.

‘What are you talking about?’ His voice rose. ‘It was through me that this house was opened up, that it began to be lived in again. It’s through me that it’s been improved so much. Just look around you at your home – it wasn’t like this when Eleanor and I moved in. It was made like this through me. And I’m not only talking about the house. The business too. It was through me that the mill began to show a bit of a profit – though it isn’t doing so well now, I grant you that. But I got hold of it, took it out of that useless manager’s hands and shook some life into it. And I helped Eleanor herself, too. It was through me that she began to live – I reckon so, anyway. Without me she’d have been stuck in her little house, never leaving it from one day to another. And don’t forget that she had me, too. And she
loved me. Although I venture to say it myself, her life was a lot richer for having known me.’

Was it? Grace wondered. Perhaps the first Mrs Spencer would have been happier left as she was, growing old with her one servant and her painting. But who was she to say? She had no doubt that Edward had been loved by his first wife.

Throughout all Edward’s alcohol-tinged meanderings, his passionate words, there had been something else, other words waiting to be said. And the longer he had gone on the more clearly Grace had felt they were there – just waiting in the dark – though she dare not ask the questions that would bring them into the light. She could not, would not allow herself to search for those questions that lay waiting to be discovered, perhaps merely acknowledged.

‘I’m tired, Edward,’ she said. ‘I’m so tired. Please, let me sleep. We can continue this another day.’

He made no response, though she could hear his heavy breathing continuing unchanging as she turned away from him on her side. She tried to close her eyes, but sleep would not come. And she was still awake when, an hour later, she heard the rhythm of his breathing change and realized that he had at last fallen asleep.

A week later the sculptor approached by Edward arrived at the house to look at the figure. Following his examination, the commission was accepted and two weeks later two workmen came to take the statue away. Grace did not observe the undertaking, but heard of it from the maid, Effie, who had been present when the men had carried it down the stairs. Later, gazing up at the high gallery, she looked at the vacant niche and thought how much she preferred it so. She would be happy, she thought, if the unattractive figure was never returned.

Edward did not feel the same way. As she stood there he came towards her from the rear of the house and stopped at her side. Following her glance, he looked upwards.

‘So he’s gone.’

‘It looks strange,’ Grace said, ‘seeing the niche without the figure. It looks so empty.’

‘It does. But it’ll be a good job done – to get that restored. The hall will be nearly complete then; it’ll look the way it was meant to look.’

Thinking of his attitude towards her, she remarked to herself that he had been morose all week, and had had little to say to her beyond the usual everyday expected words. Certainly there was no reference ever made to his drunken outpourings when he had admitted to courting his first wife solely for possession of the house.

And then last week, he had revealed, he had decided to sell the soap factory in Milan. He had not volunteered the
information to Grace; it had emerged when she had asked him when next he would be travelling to Italy. He not been there in some little while, she had noticed, and wondered how the business there was faring.

‘I shall only be going back two or three more times,’ he had said. ‘Soon I shan’t have a business there any more.’

He had then told her that he was disposing of it, selling it to one of the major soap manufacturers in the country. The problem with the company was, he said, that he couldn’t be there all the time, and that was what was required; it was essential that there was someone present with the right power and the right interest. Without his continuing, unrelenting hands on the reins of the business it had gone downhill. The economic situation in the country had also worked against him, as had the fact of him, the owner, being a foreigner. Further, he had not invested in new machinery, and the existing machines there had long past seen their best days. So, when some of the machines had begun to malfunction – he suspected sabotage, he had said – he had decided to throw in his hand and sell up.

‘Therefore soon,’ he had finished, in his relating of the story to Grace, ‘I shall be staying here most of the time. No more trips to the Continent.’ And with a slight, ironic smile, ‘And how will you like that, my dear?’

How he had changed, Grace thought once more. Over the months how he had changed. In so many ways. Not only in their relationship, but in his dealings with his businesses too. Whatever flame of enthusiasm had once been there, now appeared to have gone, so that so often he seemed to go about absorbed in a kind of surly melancholy.

He spent the greater part of his days at the mill, and when he was not there he had taken to walking in the fields, or sitting up in his study. And there he would drink, and she, sitting in the room beneath, would hear his footsteps as he paced the floor over her head, drinking whisky and
consumed by his devils. On some evenings he would eat alone there, leaving Grace to dine alone in the dining room. On latter days, if the maid let Grace know that the master had asked for a tray to be sent up to his study, Grace would forgo eating in the dining room and herself eat from a tray in the drawing room. As for the night when, drunk, he had told her of his pursuit of Miss Eleanor for the sole purpose of obtaining Asterleigh, no further reference was made to such a time; it might never have happened.

Although in his manner towards Grace he was less considerate, he still insisted he loved her, and at night his passion would often bring him to her side. After he was sated he would turn and fall into an uneasy sleep, a sleep broken by mutterings and ramblings which, to her, would make no sense.

And as the days wore on she told herself that she must get accustomed to the changes, for it was almost a certainty that they would never be as they were again. Kester was out of her life, but Billy was safe and happy. She could bear what she was going through, she thought, and indeed, it was not so bad as so many women had to suffer. She and Edward would get through this desperately bad period, for this is what she told herself it was, and when that was done they could find some measure of happiness together.

But then, she found the seeds.

In the last week of November, Grace learned that Effie, the maid who had replaced the ungracious and insolent Jane, had given in her notice, intending to find a position that was both closer to her sweetheart – apparently he was footman at a house near Bath – and better paid. Achieving the latter aim, Grace guessed, would probably not be that difficult; she did not know what wages Edward paid his staff, but she was fairly sure that they would not be over-generous. Grace did not learn directly from the maid that
she intended to leave, but from Mrs Sandiston, who mentioned it almost in passing. And then the next day Edward himself mentioned it. Grace had never been given a role in the management of the house as were other wives, but, whether she liked it or not, had to leave it to her husband and the housekeeper. Old habits die hard, she had silently acknowledged; the first Mrs Spencer had not done so, and the pattern had been set with her.

‘Seems like the parlourmaid’s going to be leaving us any day soon,’ Edward said to Grace as they sat over the last of dinner. ‘Timpkins, whatever her name is.’

‘Yes, Timpkins – Effie,’ Grace replied. ‘Mrs Sandiston mentioned it to me the other day.’

‘So that’ll mean another advertisement, more interviews. Christ knows why these girls want to hop, skip and jump from one post to another like this. But they all do it.’

‘For one thing, I understand, she wants to be near her young man.’

‘What!’ Edward exclaimed. ‘Dear God, what a reason. But that’s the way the world is, I suppose, and ever was. Can you see a man doing that?’ He shook his head. ‘Women. Ah, well, there’ll never be any changing them.’

‘Is it such a bad thing,’ Grace said, ‘to wish to be near the one you love?’

‘Oh, Grace,’ he said, ‘sometimes you sound like the voice of some pathetic novelette. Please – don’t say such things when I’ve just eaten. And be glad I haven’t got a queasy stomach.’

Grace said, ignoring this, ‘She’s a nice young girl, and very obliging. I shall be sorry to see her go.’

‘Well, she is going, and she wants a reference. She asked days ago, I’m afraid. I just haven’t been able to get down to it.’

Grace thought, this is something that I could do, as mistress of the house. It’s my duty as mistress. But she
would not suggest such a thing. Such work had always been done by Edward, who would be guided by Mrs Sandiston who would take into account the views of his wife.

‘What do you think?’ Edward said again. ‘Shall we give her a nice reference?’

‘Of course,’ Grace said, and then realized he was teasing. ‘She deserves it, and you can’t blame a girl for wanting to better her position.’

‘I suppose not. I’ll write one for her tonight and leave it on the hall table. You or Mrs Sandiston can give it to her.’

‘You’re going off first thing in the morning, are you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Will you be back tomorrow?’

‘No, I’ll stay overnight. There’s so much to sort out.’ He sighed. ‘It just doesn’t seem to get easier. On the contrary, it just seems to get more difficult.’

Grace kept quiet at this; she had heard the same complaint several times recently, and there was nothing new she could think of to say.

The next day Mrs Sandiston came to her asking for Effie’s reference. ‘Oh,’ Grace said, ‘Mr Spencer said he would take care of it. He said he’d leave it in the hall.’

But it was not on the hall table, and Mrs Sandiston said, ‘Where else would he have left it, ma’am? Effie’s hoping to get it off today to the people she’s applied to. She’s late with it already, I understand.’

‘And it’s not in the hall, you say?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Well, I can only think that it must be in his study. But I’m afraid I don’t have a key.’

‘I’ve got a key, ma’am.’

This was an interesting point. Edward’s study had to be cleaned and dusted, but it also had to be safe from intruders
and snoopers. There would never be any reason for Grace to go looking in his study, therefore there was no reason for her to have a key. On the other hand, the place would be quite safe where the servants were concerned. Not only, was it assumed, would they have no interest in what was in Edward’s study, but even if they had, they would not dare to indulge that interest.

After a moment, Grace said, ‘Yes,’ trying to make it appear that it was the simplest answer to the problem; certainly not one that would present her with the slightest of qualms. ‘Yes,’ she said again, ‘then perhaps you’d best get your keys and we’ll have a look.’

Mrs Sandiston went away and was back within two minutes carrying a bunch of keys on a large ring. She and Grace went to the study and there Grace stood aside while Mrs Sandiston unlocked the door. Then it was Mrs Sandiston’s turn to stand aside while Grace entered the room.

Grace had never been in the room on her own before, and it felt strange to go there now. She could smell the distinctive smell of the place, the wood, the leather of the book bindings, Edward’s tobacco.

With Mrs Sandiston standing in the doorway, Grace crossed the room to Edward’s desk and there looked down at the few items on its surface. On the blotter lay two or three open letters to him, and a hurried survey showed that they were nothing to do with what the women were seeking.

Mrs Sandiston, hearing Grace’s sigh, and seeing from her expression that the reference was not there, said tentatively, ‘Perhaps it’s in the drawer, ma’am.’

And Grace, hearing the words, could not turn to the woman and say,
I must not venture so far; my husband would be most displeased
, could only pause while she steeled herself, and then say, a little too brightly – as if such a
request were no more than asking for extra bread for the day: ‘Of course, yes,’ and immediately pulled on the left-hand drawer. And to her surprise it opened smoothly; it was not locked. But there, Edward expected no one but the maid to ever enter this locked room, and therefore what need was there for secrecy and locks and bolts?