Consider the Lily (32 page)

They faced each other: Flora, plump-hipped, wild-haired and a good inch taller than Robin; he, freckled, slight, a little drawn from overwork, with a hairline that was beginning to recede.

Breathing more quickly than normal (and the doctor in him calculated the adrenalin rushing through his bloodstream), Robin put out a hand and brushed the renegade hair from Flora’s face. Unsure of how to respond, she remained quite still.

‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he said. ‘Will you overlook it?’

Only a few months previously, Flora would have gabbled off some answer, but she had learnt a few things in London. She smiled and said nothing. After a moment because she couldn’t think what to do next, she sat down on the grass. ‘When did you decide to become a doctor?’

Robin picked up a stone and tossed it from hand to hand. ‘When my sister died of diphtheria.’ The stone disappeared into the grass and he bent to retrieve it. ‘She was ten. Luckily my parents made sure I went to the grammar school. We were seven, of which only four survived, so you see they had a vested interest.’

‘Was it hard?’

‘For my parents, very. We didn’t have any money and medical school was expensive.’

‘But worth it?’

‘Yes.’

She leant back on her hands, and her breasts jutted full and beautiful through her cotton shirt. The sight tipped Robin over into wanting Flora much more than he had anticipated and to stop himself he looked instead at her brown-booted feet stretched in the grass. They, too, were big and well made, but less tempting.

‘What about you, Flora?’ He said her name for the first time. ‘What are you planning to do?’

No one had ever asked Flora that question because it was considered neither necessary nor suitable. Everyone knew what Flora would do, including Flora.

‘I’ll get married probably.’ She shrugged. ‘Providing someone will have me.’

‘Nothing else?’

Flora thought of tea by the fire, of hunting through a frosty landscape, of chatting to Danny in the twilight, of wet dog tongues on her hands and horse smells, of the rustle of a taffeta ballgown and the sensation of champagne fizzing at the back of her throat, of the tick of the clocks in the house, and the sun chasing dust motes across the windows. What they made up was not a bad existence.

But perhaps they did not amount to very much. She shook her head: talking to Robin confused her.

By now his imagination was seriously out of control. He went over to adjust a strap on the bay’s saddle.

‘With a bit of luck I’ll get married quite soon,’ she said and pulled up a blade of grass.

He pulled the strap tight with a jerk. ‘Have you found anyone?’

‘No,’ said Flora, nibbling on the sappy part of the stalk, dismissing Marcus without a thought, and scrambled to her feet. Their hands brushed accidentally. Flora’s fell to her side and, the breeze whipped at her blouse. After a moment, Robin placed his hands on Flora’s shoulders and pulled her towards him. Abandoning every rule she knew, Flora did not resist.

Since she was taller, Robin was obliged to strain upwards and Flora to bend her knees before their mouths coincided. For an instant, she wanted to laugh at the picture they must make; then it became obvious that Robin meant business when he kissed the corner of her mouth and moved onto her lips.

‘Close your eyes,’ he said. ‘It’s better.’

It was. By degrees Flora relaxed. Robin’s fingers were warm and gentle on her flesh.

‘You are lovely, Flora.’

She felt a sensation running up from her stomach into her head. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Take a proper look at yourself.’

He pushed his leg into Flora’s and kissed her again, and Flora, terrified that she would do something wrong, began to understand about passion. It was an extraordinary experience – extraordinary in every sense – to have another body so close to hers, to worry, and yet not to worry, about what her own was doing. Sighing with pleasure, Robin pushed up her chin and kissed the sensitive bit beneath her ear and Flora stretched like a cat and closed her eyes.

Eventually, she began to wonder what, after such intimacy, happened next. What could she possibly say? Embarrassed, stirred, aghast, and full of singing joy, she pulled away.

Robin defused the situation. ‘Next time I shall have to arrange not to kiss you standing up, Flora. Or grow an inch.’

Gratefully, she seized on the point. ‘I used to dread being measured each year. Robbie... Miss Robson, you know... lined us up in the nursery and marked off the heights on the wall. Lucky old Polly was always the smallest.’

‘I dreaded it, too. But for the opposite reason.’

‘Obviously you didn’t eat your greens.’

He pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘There wasn’t that much to eat.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve done it again.’

‘Why don’t we agree to stop apologizing to each other?’ he said, and looked across at the rebellious hair, the bony nose and Dysart blue eyes, and felt hopelessly entangled by her freshness and genuineness. ‘Will you see me again?’

She hesitated only for a second. ‘Yes.’

When Flora returned to the house, Robbie was waiting for her and demanded to know where she had been. Flora said she was not going to tell Robbie, and Robbie put her hands on her hips and replied, oh yes she was.

No, Flora reiterated, and felt the familiar dread in her stomach. Obviously someone – one of the men up in the fields? — had ratted on her.

‘Excuse
me,
Miss Flora,’ Robbie’s hands appeared glued to her hips, ‘but it’s my business to know. I promised your mother.’ Here, Flora hissed that she did not wish to discuss
anything.

Robbie clicked her tongue against her teeth. Apart from childish tantrums and battles of will over rice pudding, sensible knickers and saying grace before elevenses, Flora had never challenged her. She pushed her broad, pale face in front of Flora’s and said, ‘You were with that doctor. I know you were. What were you thinking of, Miss Flora? The doctor, indeed.’

A new loyalty twisted in Flora at the words ‘that doctor’ and she told Robbie to be quiet. Robbie said that Flora would do exactly as she was told and promise never to see the doctor again, otherwise she would tell Rupert and Miss Flora knew what effect
that
would have on a sick man.

‘You wouldn’t do that!’

Robbie smiled. Yes, she would, she said. It was for Flora’s own good and she was the only one who could keep an eye on Flora. ‘It’s for your own good, pet,’ she said, and added that Flora’s hair needed a good brush.

After that, Flora took care to be discreet. All through that June and July she saddled Guinevere and rode out to meet Robin secretly. Sometimes over at Paradise, sometimes at Caesar’s Camp or Powderham Castle or away up Itchel Lane where the wind rippled the crop into waves and the poppies were too thick to be counted.

To the observer — and there were a few – nothing much happened. The new doctor and Miss Flora rode and talked. Once, it was reported back to Ellen Sheppey, they held hands. Another time Sam Prosser swore he saw two shadows merge under the oak tree by Lee Wood, but he couldn’t be sure.

Her garden apart, Matty had set herself the task of sorting out the contents of the attics, which had been left during the renovations. The rooms had originally been used as servants’ sleeping quarters, but after the war and Hesther’s death the number of servants had dropped and they were turned over to attics.

The rooms ran east—west along the top floor, each one stuffed with boxes and trunks, furniture and paintings. The sight set Matty’s organizational antennae quivering.

Mrs Dawes had other ideas. ‘Oh, my Lord,’ she said gloomily. Not only was the task formidable, but Matty had declared she was going to work alongside her. She surveyed hat boxes, garden chairs, shooting sticks, boot scrapers, trunks bulging with linen and cupboards piled with God knew what, and mentally girded her loins. Matty held out her hand for an apron and with the air of a condemned felon Mrs Dawes gave it to her. But once set to, they enjoyed themselves as women often do in such situations.

‘What
are
these?’ Matty held up a couple of poles encased in leather at one end.

‘Crutches, I think,’ said Mrs Dawes.

‘And these?’

‘More crutches. From the time when the house was a hospital. I thought all that stuff went back long ago.’

Matty cradled them in her arms. Someone had used these to shuffle his way painfully down the corridors and out into the rest of his life. ‘I see,’ she said and laid them down.

The piles grew and so did the list in Matty’s notebook. Progress was not as fast as it could have been, for every so often Matty pounced on an object and went into lengthy discussion with Mrs Dawes as to its history and use. Both women were feeling more positive about each other, and Matty enjoyed the sensation of bringing order into chaos.

The best of her haul was discovered behind a scrap screen which partially obscured a stack of paintings. Matty pulled out one, looked at it, said, ‘Oh,’ and then went quite pale. It was of a little girl sitting on a woman’s knee having her feet washed, ordinary people painted with an insight that made them extraordinary. She stared at it, both fascinated and pained by it, and loved it. After investigation among the family papers in the Exchequer, it was pinpointed as a Mary Cassett.

‘How could you let it sit up there?’ she tackled Kit over after-dinner coffee. They were in the drawing room where the Cassett had been hung between the windows. ‘It’s a wonderful thing. Look at the way the foot is so real in the mother’s hand and how she cradles its weight.’

Matty drank her coffee and scrutinized her find for the hundredth time. Kit got up and came and stood behind her. Matty had her head on one side and her coffee cup at a precarious angle. He put his hands lightly on her shoulders and Matty felt his touch like a burn through her dinner gown. ‘I think it came from Boston. Mary Cassett was an American,’ she said without turning round.

‘Was she?’ From habit, the muscles in Kit’s jaw tautened. ‘Perhaps... perhaps my mother brought it on one of her trips to see my grandparents.’

But Matty, absorbed in the contemplation of the brushwork and colours, apparently did not hear him.

‘Here,’ said Kit, rescuing the coffee cup and restoring it to the tray. ‘You’d better let me have this.’

Matty had heard, but she had chosen not to respond.

When she returned to the grand clear out, she went in search of a trunk she had noticed on a previous foray. It was stored in the smallest attic, in which the kitchenmaids had slept, and which was now filled with discarded nursery furniture and toys. Claustrophobic and cramped, the roof sloped at a sharp angle and every surface was covered by a layer of dust so thick it had curdled. Their life over, toys lay on shelves and in boxes: a teddy bear with torn paws, a dolls’ house which said ‘Flora’s House’ in tiny writing above the door, a French
bébé
doll on her face, limbs corkscrewed under her skirts. The
bébé’
s coat was trimmed with squirrel fur and its hair was real. White Surrey, the rocking horse named after Richard Ill’s horse, was under the window. ‘We won the Battle of Bosworth on White Surrey,’ Kit said, when Matty mentioned she had seen him in the attic. ‘He wouldn’t have allowed us to ride him otherwise. You had to be careful not to hurt his feelings’, and he told Matty about games he, Polly and Flora had played. ‘We always rewrote history,’ he said. ‘We never liked to be the losers.’

White Surrey had a painted snarl and chipped teeth and as her dislike of horses extended to the wooden variety, Matty found herself giving him as wide a berth as possible. The initials ‘HKD’ had been embossed on the leather cartouche on the trunk, which had labels all over it. ‘Boston’, read one. ‘P&O’ another. ‘Don’t touch me,’ said the whole trunk. Don’t tamper; the past can never be understood.

That isn’t true, thought Matty, and knelt down. The keys on an old-fashioned wire hoop were cold and heavy in her hand and clinked softly.

To examine the things that belonged to a dead person was, in many ways, unfair. Suddenly, you achieve mastery, even over someone you feared – and Matty did fear Hesther. You acquire power to see where it was not permitted in life. She hesitated, and then pushed back the lid.

A petrified forest of tissue paper lay on top of the contents and released a powerful odour of mothballs. It made Matty sneeze. She pushed the paper aside – and her hands froze. A glance was enough to show her that the dead woman’s effects had been piled pell-mell into the trunk, without care or consideration. With spite, even. She sat back hard on her heels.

No maid would have dared to leave the oyster satin beaded bodice to crack over the breast as this one had been left. Or scattered the contents of the glove box, or ripped the lace from the muslin blouse sandwiched between a striped skirt and matching bodice. No maid would have allowed the ostrich fan to catch in the handles of a glove stretcher. Matty put out a finger and stroked the feathers.

Why?

The mothball smell pricked at her nose and made her eyes water. She wiped them with the back of her hand, knowing without being told that she was witness to a desecration as deliberate as an ancient Greek despoiling the tomb of his enemy.

A blue leather-bound book lay near the top, gold-edged, made with thick and expensive paper. Matty picked it up.

On the first page someone, she imagined Hesther, had pasted in a postcard of the harbour at Honfleur in Normandy, taken from one side of the square through a forest of masts. On the opposite page there was a second postcard, this time of a farmhouse silhouetted against the crest of a ridge and a flat horizon beyond. Solid and unfussy, it was a substantial building with wooden shutters, ironwork gates, hens in the yard, a decaying outhouse and praetorian guard of poplars. At the bottom of the card, the caption read, ‘La ferme Boromée’. An arrow had been inked in pointing to a room on the top floor. ‘My bedroom’, someone had written, with difficulty, on the shiny surface.

Other pages in the book were blank except for greenish-yellow vegetable-like stains. The marks were puzzling, but when a dried rose fell out and disintegrated in her hands Matty realized the book had been used to press flowers. Underneath one of the blotches the unknown hand she was now sure was Hesther’s had written in jerky, urgent-looking script, ‘Konigin von Danëmark’ and ‘General Klèber’ and put in the accents incorrectly. Under ‘Général Kléber’ was written: ‘A damask-hybrid moss rose raised by Robert in 1856. Vigorous and upright. Scented. Named after the general who commanded Napoleon’s army.’