Netherwood (22 page)

Satisfied with what she saw, Lady Hoyland directed her serene gaze to the gardens beyond this industrious scene, and a look of supreme satisfaction settled on her face. How glad she was that she had vetoed Teddy’s first plan, to hold Toby’s birthday celebration back in January on the day itself. The borders, however impeccably pruned and weeded, simply lacked glory in the winter. The hellebores were always a triumph, of course; they grew abundantly in the damp and shaded fern garden where their petals of palest green, chalky pink and soft cream looked well against the lively foliage of the hart’s tongue. There were delicate aconites in January too, pushing through the russet leaves in the woodland garden, and of course the snowdrop cascade, a vast grassy bank of nodding white heads, was ever-reliable at that time of year. But, charming though these features were, they were too modest to ever be a satisfactory backdrop to an important occasion. Whereas now, mid-June, the herbaceous borders were in full flight, the magnolia bowers were still dripping with blooms, the rose garden was crowded with heavily scented flowers and the wisteria tunnel was simply glorious – it was all perfect, and a perfect garden was one of Lady Hoyland’s greatest joys. The countess’s happiness was almost complete, she thought to herself now. She had just the tiniest twinge of disappointment that the sun was refusing to shine. And a similarly tiny twinge at the fact that the London season, by now in full swing, had
produced three delightful engagements for the coming weekend which had had to be declined. However, she refused to let herself dwell; the sun was outside her influence, and London would still be there next week. In any case, it rather amused her to hold her own delightful engagement up here in the frozen north.

And anyway, not a single person had returned their apologies for the house party and most were here already. They were drifting around the house and grounds now, at their various chosen pursuits, as comfortable – or more so – at Netherwood Hall as at their own homes. Their staff, the ladies’ maids, valets and coachmen, were installed in the servants’ quarters, in rooms correctly allocated according to hierarchy by the inestimable Mrs Powell-Hughes, Netherwood Hall’s housekeeper. She could be so utterly relied upon to get it right, thought Lady Hoyland. Such an asset. She had been here almost for ever, and in living memory there hadn’t been a single ghastly blunder of the type that was common in other, less well-run establishments. Mrs P-H had an extraordinary memory for rank and title, like Debrett’s made flesh. Of course there were sometimes disadvantages to following social convention to the letter; correct form meant that too often Lady Hoyland had to endure the close proximity round the dining table of various grand but tedious relatives. She often felt her natural place was with the spirited and amusing young men – in her heart, Lady Hoyland was still twenty – lower down the table, and this led her to wonder why, of the many charming people of her acquaintance, none of them were relatives. So unjust, she thought now with a conscious smile, since she was so very charming herself.

Today’s seating plan for luncheon was a case in point. At least her own fate – diagonally adjacent on one side to the idiotic Bowlby and on the other to a painfully desiccated old duke who could only hear if one yelled into his ear trumpet
– meant she could stand up to Tobias when he complained, as he undoubtedly would, at being seated by his grandmama, Countess Gray. Lady Clarissa hoped the darling boy wouldn’t too frightfully resent the arrangement. Countess Gray had been emphatic in the demand, and it had always been impossible to refuse her.

The bell in the cupola chimed briefly to indicate a quarter past the hour. The countess started – if it was eleven-fifteen, and she feared it must be, she had left Flytton very little time to undress and dress her in time to acknowledge the first outdoor guests at half-past noon. She stepped away from the balustrade and the instant she moved, the footmen, hovering behind her, opened the great French windows to allow her through. She swept graciously past, carrying on her furs and in her hair the fresh scent of outdoors. The drawing-room fire, lit against the unseasonal chill, crackled and spat within its wide marble surround, warming the room enough to make the countess instantly irritable inside her many layers. But there was Flytton, waiting for her. She disrobed her mistress with swift efficiency, then the two of them glided from the room, Flytton two paces behind and loaded with furs, to begin the elaborate process of preparing the countess for the party.

‘What an absolutely marvellous wheeze!’

Henrietta, transported back to childhood from the lofty heights of her twenty-two years, screamed with laughter and yelled at Tobias above the noise of the engine and the rush of the wind. Her blonde hair, which had been respectably pinned up when she’d got into the car half an hour earlier, was now a disreputable tangle which repeatedly whipped her face and neck.

Tobias grinned at her, though he couldn’t hear a word she
was saying on account of the tan leather driving helmet which, along with matching gauntlets, had come with the car. The jaunty little Wolseley two-seater rattled down the hill, perilously close to the hawthorn hedge, brooking no obstructions it might encounter. He really had thought he was too far out of favour with the old man to hope for anything as divine as a motor car of his own. Certainly there’d been no mention of it on his birthday, when the haul had been excessively dull. A gold fob watch was hardly likely to set one’s pulse racing. But this morning, after breakfast, his father had led him downstairs, through the marble hall and out of the front doors on to the gravel, where stood this miraculous little motor car. The mere sight of it had done wonders for his crashing hangover. Now, having barrelled rather recklessly out of the park and down the lane, he felt euphoric, invincible. Toby had always had the capacity to enjoy the moment, and the day’s onerous filial duties were currently entirely eclipsed.

He steered adroitly, turning left along Wharncliffe Bank and beginning to climb Harley Hill. It was an ambitious project as the rutted track was more suitable for walkers than for vehicles, but the little car battled its way to the summit, and he and Henrietta sat for a while to recover from the bone-shaking motion.

‘One day, my boy, all this will be yours,’ Henrietta said, indicating the swathe of Yorkshire countryside. ‘Warts and all.’

‘Plenty of life in the old boy yet,’ said Toby. He was in no hurry to inherit his father’s title, along with all the dreary responsibility that went with it.

‘When I was twenty-one,’ Henrietta said, ‘I was given diamonds and there wasn’t any fuss made at all.’

They were parked in the shadow of a towering bonfire that would be lit at dusk in Toby’s honour. It would blaze like a beacon, visible to all. There were to be fireworks too – again.
They’d had a lavish half-hour display of pyrotechnics on his birthday six months ago. This evening they were to be set to music. Henrietta thought it was all rather overblown.

‘I do think it’s a bit rum,’ she said. ‘Especially as I’d make a much better earl than you.’

Toby laughed, though she was only half joking.

‘Well, you’re welcome to it,’ he said. ‘I say, Henry, let’s drive to London and skip the whole ghastly shindig.’

She gave him a look, part pity, part irritation. Henrietta loved her brother, but he was such an infant.

‘Start the car, Tobes,’ she said. ‘I need to get back. I must look a fright.’

‘Oh, you do,’ he said. ‘You’re all smuts and rats’ tails.’

He executed a tortuous five-point turn in a space not quite wide enough for the manoeuvre. Then, partly to irritate his sister and partly to entertain himself, he took a circuitous route home in order to make an impromptu, showy tour of Netherwood town, where the streets were once again festooned with bunting and the townsfolk were feeling particularly well-disposed towards Tobias since his party meant early closure of the pits and a free knees-up for all. The car attracted a most gratifying amount of whooping, clapping and hollering as it made its stately progress, moving slowly enough to encourage a jolly procession of children who danced along through the streets behind it. Toby, on familiar terms with many among the crowd – one or two of whom had picked him up and carried him home last night – waved wildly at everyone, while Henrietta’s dignified profile went some small way towards making up for his boundless, boyish disregard for propriety.

By the time they reached the gates of the hall and chugged down the length of Oak Avenue, preparations for the day’s events were complete and Tobias and Henrietta had been very much missed, their absence having shifted from the realm of
high jinks into that of ill manners. The New Mill Colliery Band were tuning up and the smell of roasting ox hung deliciously in the air. Two under-footmen attended the siblings as they disembarked, smut-covered and dishevelled. Henrietta, rather mortified, hurried into the house to be dressed but Toby took his time, slapping the motor car’s right wheel arch as if it were the rump of a fine filly and checking the sides for hawthorn-related damage. Lord Hoyland, regarding him from the drawing room upstairs, pondered his son’s lack of urgency.

‘He really has not a care in the world,’ he said, speaking to himself but attracting the attention of the countess. She joined him at the window.

‘Well, isn’t that just as it should be?’ she murmured.

The earl considered a reply but decided against it, not because he had nothing to say on the subject, but because he had rather too much.

H
enrietta stood before a cheval mirror clothed only in a simple cotton chemise and silk stockings which pooled in loose ripples around her shins. Her long hair had been returned to respectability, brushed, smoothed and twisted expertly into an elegant chignon, pinned with diamond clasps at the back of her head, but she still had to be dressed and Maudie, working swiftly, was fitting a long pink coutil corset, heavily boned and not built for comfort. She yanked at the lacing, pulling it tight at the waist; Henrietta yelped.

‘Snakes alive, Maudie, you’ll snap me in two,’ she said.

Maudie tutted. She heard the same complaint, give or take the odd expletive, every time the hated corset was manipulated into position. There was nothing to say in response, because one way or another, it had to be done. The countess was a stickler for a silhouette, especially where Henrietta was concerned. She knew beyond doubt that without her example – and her vigilance – her older daughter would probably jettison the bones and laces and let her posture go south.

Maudie pulled up the stockings, smoothing them over Henrietta’s knees and thighs, then clipped them securely to the suspenders. There was an air of urgency to her business;
outside, the New Mill Colliery Band were welcoming arrivals to the party with their first turn, a carefully selected medley of popular music and rousing hymns, intended perhaps as a reminder that, while the revels were beginning, a modicum of respectful behaviour might be expected throughout.

The maid held open a pair of long drawers and Henrietta stepped into them then stood passively, allowing them to be pulled up and arranged, their laces tied at the waist. Then came a series of petticoats, followed by pretty shoes of mint-green grosgrain, Maudie holding her mistress steady while she slid her feet into them. Next the dress, an elegant gown of pale yellow silk chiffon, newly purchased from the countess’s London dressmaker, was laid in an open circle on the floor for Henrietta to step into. Maudie drew it up, pausing to allow her mistress to slip her arms into the sleeves, then fastened the tiny silk-covered buttons, moving deftly from bottom to top, before finishing the task by securing the hook and eye. They chatted comfortably as Maudie worked; Henrietta was as familiar with her maid as she was with her siblings – more so, in some ways, since she and Maudie shared real intimacy in their relationship. Every day, twice a day, sometimes more, Maudie’s deft, cool fingers, brisk but gentle, drew stockings over her thighs, arranged her flesh inside her corset, placed jewels around her throat or coaxed the tangles from her thick blonde hair. It was natural that these acts of tender service should lead to shared confidences, and their friendship, while always and necessarily somewhat unequal, was important to each of them. They had been together for twelve years now, since a grateful Maudie was promoted from housemaid to attend the young Lady Henrietta, and they were as easy together as their respective stations in life allowed. Awful, thought Henrietta, often, to have a lady’s maid one couldn’t stand. Awful, for example, to have the flint-faced Flytton, though Mama seemed quite content.