Dorothy Eden (23 page)

Beatrice hadn’t discovered what William intended doing. He was so obstinately uncommunicative nowadays, and, in spite of all the small entertainments Beatrice arranged (she had never learned to enjoy being a hostess and only made herself sit cheerfully through the dinner parties and musical soirées for William’s sake), he still wore his vague haunted air. So romantic, the ladies murmured. But why so
triste
?

At least, Princess Mary of Teck wouldn’t have a Mary Medway in her life, Beatrice thought. Or one hoped not.

For a prison sentence came to an end, and then one would begin living on tenterhooks again, constantly watchful of Daisy, constantly looking for a slim dark-haired figure lurking in the streets outside Overton House.

Beatrice could not mention her fears to William, for it had become impossible to talk to him about anything except the most superficial things. It was not that he was not courteous and mild-mannered, simply that, behind his gentle smile and his handsome face, she could sense nothing but blankness.

She knew that he was happiest when dandling Daisy on his knee. That was a private pain about which she could do nothing. She refused to be jealous of a child.

Or to worry about William’s frequent absences which he never explained. He was at his club, walking on the Heath, at an art exhibition, calling on his publisher, he indicated vaguely. He had another book under commission, he was doing research for that at the London Library and the British Museum.

In other words he was leading his own life. As she was, perforce, leading hers.

The last decade of the nineteenth century was a time of great prosperity for the middle classes. The cotton mills in the midlands, coal mines and iron and steelworks in Wales, were showing handsome profits. More and more people had carriages and servants, country mansions, expensive wardrobes. They were the
nouveaux riches
whom fashionable stores cultivated. Of course there could be strikes in the mills or the mines, an uprising somewhere in the old Queen’s vast untidy empire, or a war on its borders that would spoil things a bit, but at present all was well, and the sun could shine on the splendour of an important royal occasion.

Since little business was done on a day like this, Beatrice spent her time usefully down in the basement storerooms, discussing stock. She liked to have her finger on everything. She walked between the piled-up shelves, a decisive little figure inclined to plumpness. She was going to bear quite a resemblance to Queen Victoria in a few years if she kept putting on weight. Queen Bea. She had a cold stare when annoyed or angry, but a warm sympathetic look when things pleased her, and a jolly laugh. In her thirties, she was more attractive than she had been in her twenties, having more confidence and poise, and proving that in spite of her formidable abilities she could remain pleasantly feminine.

Adam Cope thought her remarkable, as he had always done. She was a phenomenon in modern society, a successful business woman and a wife and mother.

Not a popular phenomenon among men who regarded her as having begun a new and dangerous fashion, and therefore being a traitor to her sex.

It was only her husband who didn’t seem to mind. But then he had his pockets comfortably lined, hadn’t he? And he was an extravagant indolent fellow who liked the best of everything.

He also had other ways of amusing himself, if rumours were to be believed.

It seemed that he still had the philandering tendencies of his youth, with one important difference. Now he sought a different kind of woman. In other words, his taste had become depraved. He was frequently to be seen in the squalid areas of Balham and Wandsworth, driving his fast cob in the phaeton which he preferred to a carriage and coachman. That preference answered itself, didn’t it? He wanted to be alone, he couldn’t have a family servant knowing his destination.

Nor his wife, who had heard nothing of these rumours. No one saw fit to tell her, partly from kindness, partly because William Overton looked so infernally miserable over his philandering.

But someone would tell her some day, if she didn’t find out for herself.

Well, the marriage had been an awkward one, and no one had thought it would be particularly happy.

At the end of that summer day Beatrice took home a large bouquet of the white roses, wilted only slightly by the heat. She would arrange them in a bowl on the dinner table, and perhaps the air of festivity would make William less withdrawn and preoccupied.

There was a letter awaiting her on her arrival home. It had been delivered by hand, Annie said. It was addressed in heavy black masculine handwriting, and just looking at it gave Beatrice one of her uncanny and accurate intuitions. She knew who it was from although the handwriting was unfamiliar.

She tore it open, and extracted the thick sheet of paper.

Dear Mrs Overton,

This is to inform you that the prisoner Medway was released at 11 a.m. today. You asked me to apprise you of this fact when it happened, and I am so doing.

I have the honour to be, madam,

Your obedient servant,

J. J. Browne

Governor of Holloway Prison for Women.

“Is there something wrong, ma’am?” Annie asked.

Beatrice crushed the letter in her hand.

“No, Annie. Just a small business matter. Tell Cook to put dinner back half an hour. The master may be late.”

Or he may not come home at all…

Because she was almost certain a great many of William’s absences could have been accounted for if she had liked to follow him on what she presumed were his fortnightly or weekly visits to Holloway jail.

She hadn’t followed him and she hadn’t asked questions.

But this simply could not go on.

When dinner was announced at eight-thirty, she went in and ate alone, watching the white roses shedding petals on the polished table. She was still sitting there an hour later when William came in.

He sat down, looking desperately tired, and said quickly that she was not to ring, because he didn’t want anything to eat.

“Please don’t argue,” he said, in a strange grey voice, “I know when I can eat and when I can’t.”

“But, darling, what is it? Are you ill?”

Anxiety for him, as always, had overridden her jealousy. She looked hard at his lips because they were so pale, not because they might have been all too recently kissed.

“No, it’s not I who’s ill, Bea. It’s—” His lips trembled violently. “She’s dying, dammit, she’s dying!”

“Who?” Beatrice said stupidly, knowing without the least doubt what he would answer.

“Mary, of course. Who else? They released her today because they didn’t want her to die in prison. That would have been a bit of trouble for them. So they pushed her out, and she can scarcely walk.”

“Oh, William, how dreadful! Is there nothing we can do?”

“She’s dying of consumption. She’s known it for months. So have I. I’ve been visiting her every week.”

“I know.”

His haggard face shot up.

“You knew!”

“Never mind. I knew. Or I guessed.”

“But you didn’t say anything.”

“Should I have? I thought you might feel I had interfered enough.”

“But I’ve never blamed you. Only myself. Oh, God, this is hopeless!”

“Hopeless for poor Mary Medway, if what you say is true. Where is she now?”

“I’ve got her into a small nursing home. It’s run by nuns. They seem kind. Anyway it isn’t for long. A few weeks at the most. Tomorrow perhaps. It was that damned prison, the cold and the damp and the bad food. I’ve been appealing for months to get her out. Now they’ve let her out, but it’s too late.”

“William—”

He winced as she came round the table to him. “Don’t touch me, Bea!”

She stiffened, in shock and anger. She wasn’t his enemy. She was only intensely grieved for his suffering, and genuinely appalled by the tragedy of that slim gentle young woman who was to die so young. Yet a dreadful exultant feeling was rising in her. Was she wicked, and heartless, to be conscious of such exquisite relief at this moment? It seemed to her that God was ending this tragic story in the only way possible.

When she was dead, William would be able to weep for her, and then forget her. Dead, she would be so much easier to forget, than alive.

F
OR THE REST OF
Florence’s childhood (she regarded that as over when she became twelve years of age), Papa was mostly away. Which was a pity as far as Edwin was concerned, because he was in fairly frequent trouble at his preparatory school. He needed his father’s firm hand, Florence heard Miss Sloane saying to Lizzie, and Lizzie answered, “Across his backside, the young devil.”

Actually Florence knew that Edwin hated boarding school and behaved badly because he was unhappy. On one dreadful occasion he was almost expelled for cheating. The headmaster, because of certain mitigating circumstances, finally decided on a caning, and Edwin, much to his disgust, was reprieved. He had secretly hoped to be expelled.

Mamma said later that the mitigating circumstances were the medical report they had just had on Edwin’s eyes. It appeared that he had never been able to see clearly because of short-sightedness. This was the reason for his perplexing slowness in learning. No one had suspected it. The poor boy had had to peer at a blurred blackboard, and been driven to cheating to get through his examinations.

Now he would have to wear spectacles, which was a disaster, not so much because they spoiled his handsome looks, but because it meant the end of his ambitions for a distinguished career in the army. He had badly wanted to be a soldier.

When he had come home on his last school vacation he had packed all his battered and shabby lead soldiers into boxes and put them in the cabinet with his grandfather’s famous collection. The spectacles he wore seemed to have given him a completely different personality. An owlish little boy now, he stood gazing silently at the serried ranks of Grandpapa’s British Grenadiers and Hussars, the French cuirassiers, the Russian bearskins, the Scots Guards, the Gordon Highlanders, the turbanned Indian Sikhs and the squat strong Ghurkas, the war-horses, and artillery, shells, rifles, and sabres.

Edwin had been allowed to play with this superb collection twice a year, on his birthday and on Christmas Day. He didn’t think he would want to play with it again, he said. He was tired of soldiers.

Florence supposed it must be disappointing to have to change one’s life ambition, but Edwin didn’t need to be quite so silent and miserable about it. Now he could go into Bonnington’s and help Mamma. But it seemed that Edwin was deeply opposed to that. Somewhere, at that silly school probably, he had heard that gentlemen weren’t shopkeepers, and Edwin was turning into a dreadful snob.

Besides, he couldn’t add. He was catching up fast with his reading now that he could see properly, but he had no talent for figures. And he thought buying and selling the greatest bore possible.

Now that he was a schoolboy and imagining himself superior in every way, he refused to go near the shop, even when there had been that wonderful display for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Mamma had spent thousands of pounds having dummies made to represent the peoples of the far-flung Empire, Indian maharajahs gleaming with jewels, warriors with spears from South Africa and the Gold Coast, Maoris in flax skirts from New Zealand, little brown Malays from Singapore, Egyptians from the Suez Canal area, and ebony natives from the British West Indies. The newspapers called it a
tour de force,
and there was a photograph of Mamma alighting from her brougham outside Bonnington’s, captioned “Another monarch surveying her Empire?”

Edwin told Florence that he was ragged terribly at school about it.

“You should have been proud!” Florence cried.

“Of being in trade?” Edwin said in his new supercilious voice. “If you want to know, I get ragged because my mother has to go out to work.”

“Well, what of it? I intend to go out to work, too.” Florence had no such intention. She wanted only to be married and have as many children as possible.

“You’ll probably have to,” he said unkindly. “Who would marry you?”

Florence had to restrain herself from rushing at him and pulling his hair out. She was too old for that sort of thing now. But he really was odious, and who would marry him?

However, when Papa resolved Edwin’s career by deciding that he should go to Winchester, then Oxford, and then into the Foreign Office, he seemed a little less unhappy about being denied the danger and glory of a soldier’s life. But the sulky bespectacled youth was no longer Mamma’s “pretty boy”, and he seemed upset about that even if he was much too big for such babyish treatment. Florence could have told him that Mamma had always loved Papa better than either of them, and that they were extremely tiresome when they took up time which she would have preferred to spend with Papa. Yet they had not been allowed to keep Miss Medway, whom they had loved. Which had been bewildering and painful, but it was all a long time ago.

She was grateful that she had her small sister on whom to lavish affection. Daisy, small-boned, light-footed, capricious and enchanting, roused a strong maternal feeling in her. Since Mamma was out so much, and had as little time to spend with Daisy as she had had with Florence and Edwin, Florence privately decided to take over Daisy’s upbringing. She instructed, scolded and adored. She didn’t even resent Papa’s obvious preference for his youngest child, since who could resist such an entrancing creature?

As Florence entered her teens and grew awkward, shy and diffident, and Edwin became more aloof and uncommunicative when home from school, it was little wonder that such a merry little thing as Miss Daisy was worshipped by everybody. Spoiled, too, except by her mother and, oddly enough, Miss Brown who had always been prepared to unreservedly admire any of Miss Beatrice’s children. But Miss Brown was growing testy with age, and was quickly irritated by lively small children. She said that she was afraid Miss Daisy was quite unscrupulous about getting her own way, and someone would pay for that little habit some day.