Park Lane (4 page)

‘You’ll be caught,’ she wants to shout after him but it is too late, he is gone.

His footprints cut a trail over Grace’s neatly scrubbed flagstones, but she doesn’t turn a hair. She washes them away and reaches for a dustpan and brush to take up to the dining room. Crumbs from breakfast, she can say for a reason to be up there, even though she’ll be asked why she hadn’t cleared them before.

Grace is on her way upstairs when the doorbell rings. Half past noon, she thinks, maybe a quarter to one, servants’ dinner will be finishing downstairs and they’ll all be about. Grace listens closely. If Mr Bellows is already in the butler’s pantry then she’ll have to pass, and he’ll ask to see where the crumbs are. Not a sound, and she’s quick into the dining room. Even before she allows herself to look out of the window she kneels down to beat some dust out of the rug to put in her pan. Now she looks, and outside she can see Joseph fill the gap between two men who’ve already wedged their shoulders against the rear of the cart. The water’s falling out of the sky as though there’s taps up there, and it becomes hard to see anything but a row of white cotton sleeves on wet white arms straining as if they might burst.

Is he sweet on her too? Grace heaves the thought out of her mind. No, Grace, you can’t think like that, you need to keep working, and send money home. Sweethearts are for other people.

4

EVEN BY MONDAY LUNCHTIME, THE WHOLE CITY SEEMS
to have ground to a halt in the rain, as though it’s some rare event, and it’s ten to one and she’ll have to change before lunch. Her gloves, plain winter grey, look like a zebra’s coat, and she’s bound to have traces of soot on her face, no doubt even in her nostrils. It has been worth it, though, for travelling by train with the window open had added to the sense of escape. Clemmie and Tom’s small house party at their echoing house Gowden, consisting of Tom’s ruddy-faced friends ‘Bertie’ and ‘Flipper’, had certainly needed fleeing from.

Yesterday morning when, after an unauthorised walk alone across the fields after church, Bea returned to the relentless damp of her sister’s house, an already changed Clemmie had been standing half frozen in the cavern of the hall, the telegraph in her hand. She looked her sister up and down, her gaze resting on the mud and leaves on Bea’s boots before she reluctantly handed over the brown envelope.

Bea tore it open. Any news, anything at all, meant a possible opportunity to leave early. It would have to be jolly bad news to be worse than another four days of hunting, shooting and school stories. Clemmie gave Bea at most half a dozen seconds before snatching the message from Bea’s hands. She stared at the paper as though it were an insult.

DARLINGEST SIS
, it read.
AM RESCUING YOU. BE UP HERE ONE SHARP TOMORROW. PROMISE A GRAND SURPRISE. EDWARD

Clemmie tore the paper in half and threw it on to the floor, the words rattling out of her, ‘I am going to so much trouble, Bea, all on your behalf. I give up. Enjoy life as a single woman. I mean, no wonder …’ she breaks off, and Bea feels a sharp jab in her ribcage.

‘No wonder what, Clemmie?’ she challenges her. ‘That John behaved as he did?’

Clemmie takes a breath and looks away.

‘Oh, for God’s sake get changed out of that walking dress. We’re all starving. And being late drives the servants mad. Anyway I suppose that maybe this means Edward may at last have found something to do.’

‘Clemmie, he’s barely been out of school for a year.’ Defending Edward is a reflex for Bea, even if she’s pushing out of her head thoughts of how he may be spending his time.

‘Yes, and he’s barely been home since then. A few hours between dawn and noon, and half an hour to change for the evening. He should join the cavalry. It would transform his life.’

‘How can you say that? What if the war comes?’

‘Everyone is always waiting for some war to come.’ And Clemmie turned to walk out of the hall.

‘Cavalry officers dance every night too, Clem.’

‘If only it was just dancing, and at least he would be doing something during the day. He’s hardly going to listen to one of us,’ Clem shouted back, over her shoulder.

Bea, alone in the cold front hall, bristled. Edward, dear Edward, would surely listen to her, once she had brought herself to broach the conversation.

The taxi turns into Curzon Street bringing Bea within spitting distance of Park Lane. She can even see the walls of Number Thirty-Five when the taxi stops. In front, blocking the width of the
road, is a coal cart which should have finished its rounds hours ago. For God’s sake, hurry up.

Bea pulls down a window and leans out into the rain. The cart’s horse has turned, or has been turned, more like it, at too sharp an angle and the wheels are slipping on the cobbles. It can’t be just because they’re wet. Must be oil. Whatever fool left that behind will find his engine conks out jolly quick.

The end of the coalman’s whip is reaching right up to the beast’s shoulder but the rear wheels of the cart keep slipping back into a rut between the stones. The horse whinnies, and the coalman lashes more. The rain is coming down hard now, the cobbles darkening. If Bea walks she’ll be drenched. She’ll have to dry off as well as change and that will take yet more time, and then she will have let Edward down. Oh, bother it.

The taxi rattles and Bea’s driver grunts with displeasure alongside his engine, but he is not getting out to help. Not in this weather. However, as she waits, from the mews on her left appear a small group of men in shirtsleeves, clearly ready to be soaked and blackened.

The men glue themselves to the back of the cart and begin to push. The motor behind Bea’s taxi is less patient, and hoots. Bea’s driver grinds his foot down on the accelerator in response. As the taxi shakes, the smell of petrol rises and Bea begins to feel nauseous. She decides to find a point, or a line of points, on which to fix her gaze to steady herself. From here she can see the north wall of the house, as far as the main bedroom floor and, across it, she notices a jagged crack pushing up and down right across the house. It is the first time it has caught her attention, yet it is already wide enough to see at fifty foot off.

The coal cart has been pushed forwards several times and each time it has slid back, but the man counting down to the heave is again punching the air in front of him, and they are going at it once more. Another motor, maybe two, has joined both the block of traffic behind and the chorus of horns. Bea looks at her watch:
five to one. Edward is quite capable of teasing her with a day’s silence if she is late, and Bea is not altogether relaxed as to what his surprise might be.

Bea decides to walk the few yards she has left to go. She asks the driver if she can borrow his umbrella, saying he can pick it up at the front when he drops her case. She climbs out into the rain. Taking a step at a time on the wet cobbles, she steadies herself on her heels. As she passes the cart it moves up, out of the rut and on. The men behind it, dappled black from forehead to waist, turn around and slap each other on the back, then, noticing Bea, dip their foreheads in her direction.

Bellows opens the door solemn-faced, no doubt appalled at Bea’s arrival on foot. He has a curious knack of acting as though your behaviour has let him down. Bea smiles, but obtains no reaction. Thank God Edward doesn’t play poker with the man, he’d lose the house.

By the time Bea descends from her room washed and brushed, the door to the yellow drawing room – the morning room, Mother likes to call it, even though they all point out to her that it faces the afternoon sun to the west – is open. It has stopped raining, and from the gallery Bea can hear the sound of Edward’s voice. When she turns into the room she sees, beyond Edward, a long lean frame in chiffon and wool, one elbow on the chimney piece and a cigarette in her hand. Her father’s sister, Celeste, is standing there as if her elbow had never left its marble perch – even though Mother banned her from the house a decade ago.

Bea doesn’t see Celeste often. Celeste’s circle is, Clemmie whispers disapprovingly, ‘Bohemian’. Still, Bea knocks into her at the odd dance and, perhaps once or twice a year, indeed barely a couple of months ago, meets her for a rather excitingly surreptitious lunch. To be fascinating, Bea thinks, a woman needs to have secrets, and her lunches with Celeste are at least one. So
please, Bea says to herself, be damn careful, Celeste, and don’t let on.

Celeste has her gaze upon Edward, who has pulled himself fully upright. Of course he has, thinks Bea, for Celeste has a disarming way of looking at you intently that makes the rest of the world vanish. Celeste blows a smoke ring as though she is inhaling both him and the whole room into her possession. The web of Celeste’s spell is almost visible, and it seems somehow churlish to break it, but Bea can’t spend all afternoon in the doorway. She coughs, and the two of them turn towards her. A Cheshire Cat grin stretches the dark circles under Edward’s eyes.

‘See, Bea darling,’ he declares, ‘a terribly grand surprise, and a delightfully wicked one, too.’

‘You make me sound like a piano, Eddie. Can’t I be a, well, delicious surprise instead?’ Celeste replies. She turns to Bea. ‘Darling, glorious to see you. It feels like years.’

Bea must learn, she thinks, to lie as effortlessly as Celeste.

Celeste blows another smoke ring and leans her shoulders back in a near-coquettish way. She beckons Bea across the room. Bea doesn’t move; she is hardly going to leap into her aunt’s arms in front of Edward.

‘Celeste, how perfectly glorious to see you. You haven’t changed a bit.’

Bellows coughs. It is his turn to be standing in the doorway.

‘We’d better go in,’ Bea continues. ‘Monsieur Fouret—’

‘Heavens, is he still with you? I am surprised your mother hasn’t returned him to sender on account of some transgression or another. Or simply for being French.’

Celeste takes a final puff of her cigarette and throws it on the fire. The three of them walk out along the gallery and into a dark green-walled dining room peppered with views of Venice. ‘Copies,’ Edward periodically says to Mother, who bristles at the word. ‘It’s true,’ Edward insists to Bea. ‘How else do you think Father is supporting the casinos of Europe?’

They sit down, Bellows, James and Joseph pushing the chairs in behind them. Celeste runs an eye around the room. ‘It is certainly a trip back in time.’

After the game terrine has been cleared, Celeste leans across the table. ‘So, Eddie darling. Who, or what, is the subject of your attentions?’

‘Oh, Celeste,’ he laughs. ‘The world, but not his wife. Good God, they’ve killed a cow for us. Ladies, you cannot leave until it has all been eaten.’

‘Well, we’d better stretch the conversation out,’ replies Bea. Monsieur Fouret, she thinks, is waging war upon my waistline. She takes a large helping of cabbage which, miraculously, is steamed not buttered.

‘All right then, Sweet Bea. Let me fill Celeste in on our various diversions.’

‘Diverting I hope they are,’ says Celeste.

‘Well I, of course, am seriously considering rising at dawn with the cavalry, instead of staying up until dawn at the card tables.’ Bea does not find this as amusing as her brother does. ‘Clemmie and Tom,’ he continues, ‘are squeezing the family into Gowden.’ Ha, thinks Bea. ‘Sweet Bea is being an ardent huntress of husbands.’ Less funny again.

‘Don’t tell me,’ replies Celeste, who has eaten nothing. ‘Your mother is giving a series of lectures on how women must resort to violence in order to remain at home and avoid the responsibilities of having a voice.’

They all laugh. Bea doesn’t want to laugh but she does, downright cheek on Celeste’s part, sitting in Mother’s house, but on the nail. Mother could, quite possibly, surrender a limb rather than follow Celeste’s Mrs Pankhurst, and burn down a building for the vote.

Then a stroke of sadness crosses Celeste’s face; she’s looking around at the room again. ‘I wish,’ she says, ‘it hadn’t been so long.’

‘But,’ replies Edward, ‘doesn’t that make it all the more fun to be here?’

‘No, funnily enough, it doesn’t. I just remember all the things that won’t happen again. Let’s scram. I’ve always found this dining room a morbid haunt.’ Quietened, Celeste leads them back to the yellow drawing room.

Edward vanishes at the door and Celeste’s mood shifts as though she levered into reverse for a few moments and is now motoring forwards to make up lost time. She sits down on a slightly worn dark green velvet sofa, pats the seat beside her, leans back and looks at Bea expectantly. And Bea does just as Celeste expects, feeling the sofa sag as she sits into it, as though it will not let her get up again until Celeste has quite finished.

‘Heard you needed some cheering up, old girl, something to distract you.’

Celeste has crossed her legs away from Bea, and is talking to her slightly over her shoulder in a voice that, as ever, sounds as if Celeste has spent the past two days as the town crier.

‘Me? Oh no, I’m fine, utterly fine.’ Bea glances at the clock.

‘Poppycock,’ replies Celeste. ‘And eyes on me, darling. Edward assures me that your Mother will not be back until this evening. Something about a horse, or the garden. Or maybe just another ineffectual pamphlet.’

‘That’s harsh, Celeste. Think who she manages to talk to.’

Bea pulls herself back up and walks over to the chimney piece where she finds a blue enamelled cigarette box and starts fiddling with the lid, flicking it open and closed. It is, she thinks, my mother you are talking about, Celeste, however unreasonable she can be.

Celeste continues. ‘Oh, I know, she speaks to every member of the Cabinet. But what good has just talking done?’

‘They’re nearly there, Celeste.’ Bea opens and closes the cigarette box again. ‘They just have to put a suffrage bill through Parliament.’

Celeste has taken a cigarette out of her own case, and waves the hand holding it, sending up a spiral of smoke.

‘And for how long have they been saying that? They’ve been “nearly there” for a decade, darling, and each time they come close, Irish Home Rule inevitably raises its head and pushes the vote off the agenda. And now we’ve got the Cat and Mouse Act to contend with. It’s ridiculous, Beatrice, you know it is.’ She slightly angrily flicks her ash to the side, where it misses the ashtray and falls on to the Turkish rug at her feet.