Rutherford Park (15 page)

His joke fell flat. She merely murmured, “The fashion for Egypt and all that. Yes, I see.” Then she paused thoughtfully. “Has he been in London? I think William may have met him at his club. Some years ago, when William was last in Parliament. Does he have…” She waved her hand close to her face. “It’s rather…what would one say…?”

“The nose. Yes, that’s him. He comes to London,” John confirmed. “He’s a regular traveler.”

“I hear there’re a lot of Americans in Luxor and Cairo.”

“Yes.” He grinned. “We infest everywhere. Like fleas.”

She rewarded him at last—at
last
—with the ghost of a smile. “And are you a flea?”

“You’ll be scratching in no time. Maybe you’re scratching already, with my coming here?”

“And why would I do that?”

He waved his hand at the library. “Centuries undisturbed,” he said. “Picking it over, shaking off the dust.”

“My God,” she replied. “Shake it off all you like. It deserves it.”

There was a beat or two of silence. He felt like he had stepped into something: some dark, unexpected pool of water.

“You’re from Yorkshire yourself?” he asked. “Another house nearby?”

“No,” she said. “I’m an outsider, Mr. Gould. Just like you.”

She sat down at the library table, arranging the folds of her thin
cream dress carefully around her. She wore some kind of lace collar with a point hanging down her back almost to her waist; it looked as if that heavy Brussels lace alone were worth a fortune. And then, with a jolt of surprise, he saw that her feet were bare. He struggled with the sudden juxtaposition of the heavy, all-covering lace and the glimpse of naked skin, but she was already talking.

“I’m one of those whom they marry to keep the houses paid for,” she was saying. “Every now and again they take up with some common woman with money, with a fortune. They install us so that they can pay the staff.”

He stared at her, shocked. A creeping tide of color had risen on her throat. She put her hand to it almost immediately.

“Well, I guess…” he began. But he couldn’t think of anything to say. She had sounded so bitter.

They were interrupted by a footman at the door, carrying a tray. “You’ll have coffee?” she asked.

They sat while the sun crept round the garden outside. She barely touched the tray. He tried to think of some innocuous subject.

“You’ll go to Egypt too?” she asked eventually.

“Yes.”

“As a guest of this man, this Mr. Morgan?”

“Yes. I find him inspiring. He put me onto history.”

“You’re inspired,” she murmured, as if envious. “And do you have a family, a wife?”

“I wouldn’t inflict my life on a woman.”

“Why, what sort of life do you have?”

“A selfish one. Traveling, pursuing things that interest me.” He got up and went over to the first shelf he had seen as he had come into the room. “Like this,” he said. “Look at this.
Travels in the Chinese Regions, 1822
.”

“They sponsored exploration,” Octavia said. “They paid people to go looking for them, to find trade routes or bring back botanical specimens. We have trees in the garden here brought back from China.”

“See, that’s what I like,” he told her.

“They were everywhere,” she said. “But the Caribbean mostly. Doing I don’t know what.”

He glanced around at her. “And your family?”

She gave a short, soft laugh. “We dirtied our hands. We stayed where we were and built wool mills. We ran them. We still do.”

“
You
do?”

“My managers. Or rather, as they are now, my husband’s managers.”

“And this is….” He paused, wondering whether he should say it. “Excuse me, but this is what makes you a common woman?”

She didn’t answer. She looked at her naked feet.

“I guess I shouldn’t say it,” he murmured, “but you know those Beckforths were pretty darn common to start off with. The first of them being a horse catcher and all.”

She glanced up. “A what?”

“The first colonel, the one who got to Jamaica whipping three slaves ahead of him. He’d been at sea. God knows if he stole the slaves. But he couldn’t get work, so he sold himself as a horse catcher.” He saw that Octavia was smiling. “Must have caught a lot of horses. They made him governor. It’s all in the library at Oxford University. The great-grandson put his diaries there.”

“They were the richest men in the Caribbean,” she countered. “And that great-grandson built a very famous house in England. He was an art collector. His father had been the Mayor of London.”

“That’ll be the man with fourteen illegitimate children by two mistresses?”

Her glance skittered away from him; she pushed away her coffee cup.

“They started marrying real well,” he continued, anxious to get her smile back. “There was a daughter who married an earl, and then that art collector—well, he was fine. Filled his house with choirboys and made them dress in harem pants. And he seduced his cousin’s wife. But that’s really no surprise, because her husband didn’t do a whole lot but build a ten-mile wall round his house and shoot things. And that same cousin brought a boy from Italy and kept him in his house until the boy escaped when he was eighteen, and dashed away to France, where he went crazy one day and murdered an Italian countess for wearing a green dress. And then there’s his wife—the one who got seduced by the harem-pants man—her mother left her father, and her sister got along just fine with her coachman, but not before her husband filled the house with his prize pigs and gave them whole damned great sofas to lie on and tucked blankets round them at night….”

Finally, she was laughing. “That’s not so,” she said.

He gestured at the library. “Got to be here somewhere. You want me to find some family letters?”

“No, no,” she murmured.

“And then there’s Jamaica,” he added. “You think your hands are dirty with the wool mills? Did you read anything here? There’s half a dozen volumes right over there. The lives of slaves. The rebellion of 1831. They executed them all kinds of dirty ways. They said they weren’t human. But it was them, the plantation owners. It was those people who weren’t human.” He sat back in his chair, seeing the mixture of humor and dismay on her face. She began to frown.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’ve really no right.”

“This part of the family here, William’s family,” she said slowly, “were the ones who didn’t want slaves.”

“I appreciate,” he answered.

“But no, you don’t,” she told him. “William’s father was an extraordinarily kind man. He was given this house because he didn’t want part of that trade. And because he wouldn’t sit in Parliament.”

“I’m sorry to correct you,” John said, “but the money that bought this house came from Jamaica and all the misery out there.” She held his gaze. “But who am I to talk?” he asked. “Money trickled down to my father from the fine art of clubbing union workers unconscious when they went on strike. Esteemed cousin Jay had a filthy character, they say.” He spread his hands apologetically.

She stood up slowly. “Mr. Gould,” she said, “you are welcome to read through anything you find here, since William has given his permission.” She walked to the door, where she turned briefly. “But I think it rather below the belt to insult his family. Despite everything this year, I am proud of our place here.”

And, before he could answer, she was gone.

Leaving just the one phrase in his head, and it rattled around in his head all day long.

Despite everything this year.

* * *

T
wo hundred miles south, Harry was in London, standing in front of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and looking at Trafalgar Square. He had come from the Gaiety along the Strand, and was staring at the blackened column of Nelson, thick with its years of soot in the midday sun. He was waiting to keep an appointment with his father.

His hands were plunged into his pockets, and he wore a bowler tipped back on his head and a sunflower in his lapel. He’d almost bought a checked waistcoat to set the lot off. If the cheap ensemble didn’t make his father’s blood pressure rise, however, then nothing
would; he wouldn’t need a bookmaker’s waistcoat to see William’s fury etched in every pore.

He was thinking grimly that it would be jolly fine fun if his father would knock the hat off his head. He’d rather enjoy a fistfight with the old man. He was sure to come off better; he’d had his share these last few months. He would give anything to see William’s top hat roll in the muck under the wheels of the omnibuses; he’d like to see it trodden on by one of the delivery carts trotting round the square, weaving in and out of the lumbering buses with their lurid Dewar’s advertisements snaking up their outside steps.

William was coming from the Royal Exchange. He had let Harry know that in the letter from his club yesterday evening.
I shall be engaged at the House until eleven, and thereafter at the Exchange
, he had written. And followed it with a veiled reference to their having to speak about money. Of course, the old man meant debts.
His
debts. Harry had penned a reply saying that he’d meet his father in the street, knowing that would be beneath his dignity. Well, if he didn’t come, what of it? He doubted anyway that he would look the old man in the face, such was his contempt. He hadn’t laid eyes on the lying bastard for nearly five months.

It was Charlotte who had started the story, of all people.

He had gone to the London house on a whim that morning last March; the kind of whim that drove a fellow home to see whether his mother would lend him money. He remembered feeling bad even then—not sleeping for thinking of Emily’s face—and had probably been drunk all day; since Christmas he had been trying to make life jump, to make it live, to fill it with something to make the blood run hot. As a result, he had felt tired: slow to catch on, hands thick, brain filled with mud. He wasted his days with God knew what—anything. Nothing. Women, sport. He had almost
cried when he had first seen Louisa in her presentation dress, because she had looked so very virginal and clean: laughing and bright, nothing clouded in her face. He couldn’t remember when he had last felt clean like that. Some days he had felt as if Emily were still clinging to his neck, haunting him with that aghast expression of that December night—that horrible look of humiliation. He fought it off, occupied himself, roared and fought and gambled. It was fine. Very fine. All told, he was a very fine fellow. He’d knock anyone down who said otherwise.

He had hardly got in the door that night—with the footman looking like someone had died—before he saw his youngest sister on the stairs, first putting one foot on an upper step, and then back again in a private little dance of indecision.

He’d thrown his hat in Charlotte’s direction. “What are you hopping about for?” he’d asked, grinning. “Go on up or come down, one of the two.”

Charlotte had put her finger to her lips and indicated the drawing room with a twist of her head. “Mother and Father,” she’d whispered, stricken. He had stopped and listened. He could hear voices: his father’s uppermost. But he couldn’t hear the words. “What’s the matter?”

Charlotte had gazed at him. “Where have you been?”

“Out and about.”

“There’s been the most awful row.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know,” she had confessed, looking agonized. “Somebody was here last night. Father came home, and…”

“And what?”

“There was a man.”

A smile had begun to spread over Harry’s face. “This sounds rum,”
he said, and made straightaway for the drawing room, ignoring Charlotte’s calls to come back.

When he had opened the door, William had been standing by the fireplace, where a fire burned. It was the only bright spot in a room steeped in grey; no lights had been lit. The freezing March day seemed to have invaded the room despite the blaze from the hearth.

He caught William saying, “…a necessity.” Then his father saw him.

Octavia was standing by the window. To his astonishment, she was weeping. He had never seen his mother cry. Laugh, yes; wipe her eyes at some absurd story. But real tears? Never. He was across to her in half a dozen strides. “Mother! What is it?” Octavia had taken his hand briefly; in a curious gesture she tried to stroke his arm, a gesture of pleading restraint. Harry had turned back towards his father. “What has happened?” he asked.

William took an age to answer; then, “Come here and sit,” he said. “Sit with your mother.”

Octavia had guided her son back to the couch; William stayed standing. In retrospect, it was one of the things Harry couldn’t forgive: that William stood over them, every inch the patriarch, the figure of authority, while they were forced to sit beneath him looking up into his face. He might have sat opposite. He might at least have brought himself to their level.

“There is news,” William had begun slowly, “which I had hoped never to have to share with you.”

At Harry’s side, Octavia let out a gushing sigh that might have been disgust. “Is it Louisa?” Harry asked. “Where is she?”

William had waved his hand dismissively. “It’s not Louisa.”

Harry had looked from one parent to the other, mystified. His mother was looking away, towards the fire.

“I have a son,” William said slowly. “That is, I have another son. He is a French citizen.”

“French…?” Harry smiled involuntarily. It was ridiculous.

“His name is Charles de Montfort. His mother is Helene de Montfort. He came here last night.”

Harry stayed for some time looking at his father without saying a word. He was trying to work it out. Helene de Montfort was a reasonably regular visitor to Rutherford; she was some sort of distant cousin, his father’s age. Maybe a little younger. All very French. She always emphasized that. All the little French phrases, all the names dropped.
That
awful woman? “She was at Rutherford at Christmas,” he said slowly.

“Yes.”

“At our table. In our house.” In the ensuing silence, he rose to his feet. “How old is this…this Charles?”

“He is twenty-one this month.”

Harry looked back at his mother. She’d told him years ago that he was born a year after she and William were married. He was nineteen now. And so…