Touchstone (19 page)

“But, dear boy,” she continued, “do try to play down the Mother’s Ruin. It takes the edge off things, I know, but in the long run it can make life difficult.” The bright gaze shifted to her brother’s friend. “And you, Mr. Stuyvesant; I expect you to keep an eye on him. If he shows signs of falling too far into a bottle, take him for a long walk up the Peak, or down to Batty’s Tump.”

“I shall do my best, Miss Grey.”

Grey balanced the glass on the arm of his chair and stretched his feet towards the fire. “And you, young thing. When you’re not brawling with the strike-breakers, what’s the pash these days?”

“Really, Bennett, you are so out of touch. We’re all deeply serious now, nobody has ‘pashes’ any more; we have ‘causes.’ And as you well know, when I’m not at home listening to Mother complain that I’m never there, I divide my time between Women’s Help in the East End—that’s the free clinic—and Look Forward—that’s the political group.” Her words were light, even dismissive, but Stuyvesant could see that she took both groups seriously. “I don’t think I’ve told you about Laura’s latest conquest—” She paused for an aside to Stuyvesant. “Laura Hurleigh, that is, who doesn’t like to be called ‘Lady.’ She started the first clinic, and helps run them. Laura’s latest conquest for Look Forward is Cora Burton-Styles. You remember her?”

“God. Cora Burton-Styles is seared into my memory.” Grey said it with feeling.

Sarah laughed and turned again to Stuyvesant. “When my brother was fourteen, he fell head over heels in love with a neighbor, Cora Burton-Styles, probably because she was nearly a foot taller and could beat up any boy her brothers brought home. Unfortunately, Bennett’s very best friend had fallen for her at the same time. So the two boys decided that the only way to handle the problem was to set a quest—terribly King Arthur, you see? The first one to climb to her window and give her a red rose without getting caught would win the rights to her affections. Only the problem was,
la belle dame sans merci
was indeed
sans merci,
and when Bennett’s lovelorn face appeared in Cora’s first-floor window late one night, a rose clenched between his teeth, she screamed, flung open the window, and bashed at him with her silver hair-brush. He fell fifteen feet and landed on some prize peonies, and Cora’s father swore that if Bennett ever set foot on the place again, he’d take a shotgun to him.”

“Nearly broke my neck,” Grey remembered. “I’ve loathed peonies ever since.”

“Lucky they weren’t rose bushes,” Stuyvesant commented.

“And after all that,” Sarah concluded, “in the end it turned out that Cora doesn’t like boys much anyway, so it was all for naught.”

“But she’s lending a hand with this political group—what did you call it, March Forward?” Stuyvesant asked, steering the conversation in a direction that might do some good.

“
Look
Forward. Yes, donating money, mostly. Some of us feel it’s the only hope. Bennett doesn’t take me seriously, ’cause I’m only his little sister, but honest, this country is in such awful shape, even I have become aware of it. A person has to be pretty blind not to see how terrible the inequality is—I have school friends whose sole interests in life are Paris fashion and getting invited to the smart parties, when a five-mile circle drawn around their houses will find children who go to bed hungry, men working for less than they made in 1905, and women who have one baby after another with no medical attention at all. And Laura and I thought, if people like us don’t stand up and make a fuss about it, who will?”

“So Look Forward advocates political change?” Stuyvesant asked.

“Among other things. Basically, it’s a meeting-place of minds,” she told him, eyes shining, feet coming to the ground so she could lean forward in emphasis. “Look Forward draws from all the levels of society, rich and poor, right and left, in an attempt to overcome the traditional boundaries and distinctions. We’ve brought together Union leaders and Members of Parliament, miners’ wives and lady office-workers, dock-workers and undergraduates. One of the projects we’re working on now is a children’s play camp in the summer, with children from all backgrounds coming together for two weeks to play together and learn from each other.”

If her speech sounded like words composed by another, there was no doubting the sincerity of her belief. Stuyvesant found himself smiling at her enthusiasm. He caught himself up short, and turned his mind to business. “I haven’t heard about the group. Are there many members?”

“Hundreds,” she said, sounding proud.

“Do you have a leader?”

“Leadership is archaic,” she said promptly. “Most of the world’s problems stem from hierarchies—laws that support the status quo, leaders whose main interest is keeping the under-classes in line. We all do what is required according to our strengths.”

“So if you need someone to talk to a Member of Parliament, you’d send a miner’s wife with a child on her hip?”

She shook a finger at him. “Mr. Stuyvesant, you’re teasing me. But yes, wouldn’t that be ideal, to see a coal miner’s wife sitting down in conversation with the Prime Minister? However, we’re young, we are forced into compromise.”

“So there’s no particular leadership. Who makes the decisions about projects and directions?”

“A group of us talk everything over. Laura Hurleigh is probably the most active member at the moment. Richard—Richard Bunsen—is the one who started it, but of late he’s been rather wrapped up in matters to do with the Miners’ Union.”

“Along with the rest of the country,” Grey remarked.

“I’ve heard that name, Bunsen,” Stuyvesant said, sounding uncertain.

“Richard is beginning to make a name for himself in politics,” she said. “That’s probably where you heard of him. He’s a fine public speaker, with a real sense for what the nation needs—some of his projects have just taken off like wildfire. You’d like him. So would you, Bennett. Now, don’t scowl at me, Richard’s an interesting man. He may drop by here during the weekend, but even if he doesn’t, now that you’re coming out of your hibernation, I’ll make certain you meet him. You’d have a lot to say to each other.”

“We shall see,” Grey said. “Another drink, Sis?”

She tipped the glass so the ice rattled against her teeth, and said, “No, that’ll do me nicely. All shakes, gone, see?” She held out her hand, and it was indeed quite steady. “I must go dress, I feel as though I’d been dragged through the shrubbery behind one of Her Grace’s hunters.”

“You don’t look it,” her brother said, before Stuyvesant could. Both men got to their feet as she rose to go.

“My brother, the honey-tongued devil. Shout me up when you’re going over,” she told him. “I won’t be long.”

“Funny thing is,” Grey confided to Stuyvesant as they walked up the stairs, “she actually won’t be long. One of the most ungirlish girls I know.”

“Still, that’s a nasty thing to have happened.”

“Yes. Except that if I know her, she’ll make it into a joke and dine off the adventure for a month.”

In his room, Stuyvesant found his evening wear laid out on the bed, wrinkles banished; similarly, the clothing he had hung in the wardrobe had been meticulously re-arranged, the shirts pressed, the suits brushed to perfection. Even his hair-brushes and shaving implements had been cleaned and laid in neat order. The shoes he had left on the floor of the wardrobe had been polished and replaced, but to his relief, the loose board had been overlooked.

The valise was nowhere to be seen. However, he thought as he gazed at his reflection in the toes of his evening shoes, if he’d left the gun out, the maid would probably have oiled it punctiliously, polished each of the bullets to a shine, and put it back precisely where she’d found it.

He crossed the hall to the bath-room and washed off the day’s grime, then came back and, standing in his under-shorts at the room’s small mirrored sink—hot water piped in here, too—he shaved with care. He checked himself for stray tufts, eyed what he could see of his chest critically, deciding it wasn’t all that bad for a man of forty. He brushed his hair with his favorite (unscented) hair oil, cleaned his nails, and set about the painstaking task of clothing himself in evening wear. As he was threading the studs through the stiff fabric and cursing under his breath, he heard the footsteps and voices of arriving guests, two young men by the sound of it. They took the two rooms on the other side of the hallway—carriage and taxidermy—banging and calling out to each other. Doors shut and the sound of quiet butlerian footsteps was broken when a door rattled open and a voice asked Gallagher if the drinks tray was downstairs.

He reassured the guest that he would check the ice and the tonic. The young man said, “Right-ho.” The door banged shut; Gallagher’s footsteps retreated down the stairs; Stuyvesant moved to another stud, musing on the fact that the young guest had not expected Gallagher actually to fetch him a drink.

Stuyvesant had limited experience with the ways of the English, but over the years, he had spent a certain amount of time among the American rich. The rigidity of pre-war households had relaxed a great deal, mostly because few could still afford the number of servants they had once employed. Still, he’d have thought that servants, when available, might generally be expected to wait on guests.

He was on the last stud when he heard a door open and close and footsteps approaching down the hallway. Stuyvesant stretched out an arm to pull open his door, then stepped back to the mirror.

“I’ll just be a second,” he told Grey when the blond man appeared. “Whoever staged a lightning raid on my wardrobe and plastered my shirt-front with starch did not account for large and clumsy fingers.”

“Large, perhaps.” Grey leaned against the door and watched as Stuyvesant adjusted the neck-tie around his collar and began shaping the knot.

“Tell me, the role of the servants here seems a little unusual. I mean, I’ve been in houses where you practically have to lock the bath-room door to keep the maid from scrubbing your back for you. Here you’re left to fetch your own drinks, but then they go and iron your clothes and polish your shoes when you’re not looking.” He scowled at the bow and tugged it loose to start over.

Grey chuckled. “The Duke’s interpretation of aristocracy takes some getting used to. You see, when he was a young man, he went through a radical phase. He decided feudalism was A Bad Thing, so he changed the way his servants lived—decent housing, education for their children, no demeaning labor, fair pay, the lot.”

“Sounds positively Bohemian—I’m surprised they didn’t hang him for high treason.”

“The House of Lords cherishes its eccentrics. Then during the War, Laura had another bash at his hibernating radicalism. She badgered him into banning all the trappings—which among other things meant the livery.”

Stuyvesant just grunted in response, having reached a tricky part with the tie.

“Push down with your middle finger,” Grey suggested, which did, indeed, help. He waited until the tie was past danger, then continued. “Unfortunately, the servants rather liked some of the trappings, and as for the rest, well, they had their own very definite way of running things. Basically, for the past forty years it’s been a tug-of-war. No livery, but the clothing they wear might as well be a uniform. And guests mustn’t be overly coddled, both because it’s one of the Duke’s pet rants and, more rationally, since it loads on the work too much—this house has less than half the number of servants it had twenty years ago. On the other hand, the maids can’t bear to see a guest poorly turned out—it reflects badly on their professional standards.

“What it boils down to is if an able-bodied guest can do a thing without stepping on the house’s toes, he’s expected to do it. Fetching his own drinks from the general room comes under that category; fetching a bucket of ice from the pantry does not, since that would require his intrusion onto the servants’ territory. A guest is expected to dress and to draw his own bath—or have his man do it for him, if he’s brought one—but a guest cannot be expected to carry a shirt to the laundry, heat up a flatiron, and produce a freshly pressed garment, as that would be another intrusion on Gallagher’s realm.”

While Grey was talking, Stuyvesant had tweaked the tie to his satisfaction. He pulled a handkerchief from the drawer, shook his head at its remarkable crispness, and tucked it into his pocket, looking at the result in the mirror. He’d been right, last year, to spring for the more expensive suit, which he could wear with pride, no matter the surroundings.

He smoothed his hair a last time, and followed Grey into the hallway. “So if I go shooting I wait to be given a gun, but once I have it, I carry and load it myself.”

“You’ve got the flavor of the thing.”

“And if I ride, I rub down the horse afterwards myself.”

“That might be one of the gray areas. I’d say, you start the process and, if no one comes to take the job over, you’ve been judged competent enough to be trusted with the animal’s welfare.”

Stuyvesant grinned. “Sounds about what I’d expect of a titled family that tools around in a decrepit old Morris instead of a Rolls or a Daimler.”

“That’s the Hurleighs for you.”

At the bottom of the stairway, Stuyvesant hesitated. “Didn’t your sister want us to let her know when we were going over?”

“She’s already gone. Nearly ten minutes ago.”

Ten minutes ago, Grey had been in his own room, behind closed doors, at the far end of the building from the main door, yet he had heard his sister go out. Stuyvesant nodded, and stepped outside.

Instead of following the path towards the drive, this time they circled the house, and Stuyvesant entered Hurleigh’s formal garden for the first time.

It was nearing dusk, a clear April evening. The air was rich with scents: fresh-turned soil, mown grass, the musk of a rose, some spicy herb, and a number of unidentifiable teasing traces of growing pleasures. The sky’s arc described the full spectrum of blue, from near-white to throbbing violet; lamps had been hung from branches and in the small building at the center of the rectangle, lamps so delicate they seemed less to push back the gathering darkness than to pull it in and play with it. The sounds of merriment spilled into the garden from above, voices and music, punctuated by the occasional clink of glass.