Sons of Fortune (35 page)

She was glad of one thing: It helped her face the world, being so calmly furious. And she had an important world to face tonight.

***

Nanette unknowingly contradicted these hopes as she helped Nora to dress for her salon. Tonight was to be the last and most important musical evening of her season.

“You must not let this stupidity upset you so,” she said.

Nora, astounded, thinking the maid must be a mind reader, asked what she meant.

“This Mary Coen. It is nothing.”

“Oh!” Nora laughed. “I had forgotten that.”

“So you say,” Nanette answered. “But look at you. Every muscle!”

Nora decided then to confide in Nanette, who had shared every other secret—well, almost. She had to tell someone. She had to get those words out of her and into the world. If Rodie were here, she would tell Rodie and not Nanette. But Rodie was in France. So…

“I have just discovered that Lord Stevenson has a mistress,” she said.

Nanette did not even pause in brushing Nora’s hair; but Nora saw her lips pinch together.

Nanette shrugged. “He is a man.”

“I never thought it of him,” Nora said. “And don’t try to pretend you did.”

Already, even the fact of saying it made it sound less dreadful. But to call her—and them—Stevenson; that still hurt furiously.

“It’s more natural than not,” Nanette said.

“Natural!”

“Normal, then. It’s more normal. Sad, yes, but normal. A French woman would not be surprised. She would know what to do.”

Nora glanced in the mirror to see a sly little smile on the maid’s lips.

“Oh, no,” Nora said. “That’s not me.”

The little smile turned to a sneer. “No, that’s not you. You preserve your honour as a superiority. For you it is like capital, yes? You will bank it with Lord Stevenson and take your profit in his guilt. That’s
you
!”

“You attend to your work,” Nora snapped.

The little smile returned.

Caspar did not like his mother’s musical evenings. At other people’s musical evenings you could talk away all you wanted. But not at his mother’s. There everyone behaved as if it were a church, with music for prayers and applause for amens. Just as they were about to start Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s A-major symphony he remembered that tomorrow was his big day and he ought to try to get some sleep. He stole away as the first violin arpeggios rang out.
Chomp and scrape
, he thought.

Ten minutes earlier Mary Coen had finished her work down in the scullery. Everyone had been very kind to her; it was a happy house this, from top to bottom. Down there she had heard nothing of the recital; but as she limped up the back stairs to the attics, those ethereal melodies of the greatest of K.P.F. Bach’s great Hamburg symphonies began to reach her. At the final landing she found the green-baize door open, no doubt because of the heat. The sound carried in its full, majestic volume up the great stairwell and pinned her to the threshold in wonder.

She had never heard an orchestra before, much less one of this quality. The sound burst on her with all the soul-shattering impact of a revelation. She could no more move back from that spot than she could command time to cease. Forgetting who she was and where she was, she edged forward to the balustrade and sank to the soft stair carpet.

Bathed in that infinity of music she pressed her cheeks to two of the ornamental-iron balusters and peered over. Two grand spirals of rosewood and marble led her gaze down to the great hallway below. She had no eyes for the rows of listeners who crowded the hall and thronged the lower gallery, all as rapt as herself; instead she looked in astonishment at the twelve players who sat facing the foot of the stairway, unable to believe that a mere dozen men could conjure up such glory and launch it on the air. She wanted it never to stop.

She closed her eyes then, and let the sound possess her totally.

They were beautiful melodies. You could sing them, but you didn’t want to. Even choirs of voices could not get that loveliness out of such tunes—not heavenly choirs, either. It was already perfect. She envied those players, whose life was passed so close to that perfection.

An image arose in her mind then: the image of Boy, whom she loved…loved…loved, and never could have. This music was her love for Boy. Its celestial reach was hers. Its great calm and permanence was everything that the world could never diminish from her. Its fleeting passage was the poignancy of all that she had lost in losing him. Its dying fall was the death of her hope. Its memory, on into the silences, was her life. She clung to the banisters as she clung to the music as she clung to the memory of her sweet, tormented Boy. The tears that ran down her cheeks were no more intrusive than her breathing.

Mrs. Jarrett, passing the open door, looked down and saw the dirty little scullery maid sitting out on the gentlefolks’ landing, cheeky as you please. “Hey, miss!” she called out sharply. The girl began to stir, as if rousing from a deep slumber.

The call did not reach down to the guests, but Caspar, on the landing below, and opposite where Mary sat, heard it. He looked up and was astonished to see the girl there. He had never seen Mary anywhere but in Connemara, so it was a second or two before his identification became fully conscious. When it did, he sprinted on and up the last flight of stairs to where she sat.

“Psst! Come off out of it!” Mrs. Jarrett was hissing at her through the doorway.

“That’s all right, Mrs. J.,” Caspar told her. “I’ll look after this.”

Had it been any other servant, she would have drawn herself up to her full majesty and, ignoring him, have ordered the girl back into bounds. But she stood there uncertain, remembering that the first big, blistering disagreement between the master and mistress—years ago—had been about this girl; the master was known to be very solicitous of her; the mistress had made the girl sit in the drawing room this afternoon, had given her refreshment—and had hastened out of doors immediately after. A housekeeper’s job was to peer and pry, she knew; but, she decided, there were times when it was best not to push too hard. Anyway, she could not bear to look at the girl too long.

“Very well,” she said, and went, ostentatiously stiff, up the servants’ stair.

Mary flashed Caspar a smile of gratitude.

“I’m amazed to see you,” Caspar said. “Obviously I’m the only person who doesn’t know you have come back to us. Or didn’t know.”

She could not hear him. The music had claimed her again.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

She nodded, not opening her eyes.

He waited, knowing the music would soon end. These scrape-scrape merchants needed their fizz like everyone else. He took advantage of her closed eyes to scrutinize her face. The unblemished half really was rather serenely good. She’d have been a stunner if she’d got out of that fire a bit quicker.

The outlines of her body were clear beneath her light scullery dress. He remembered how perfect and pale her flesh had gleamed with Boy in that grove. Idly, with little sweat, he wondered if there’d be a chance for him here—though she was a bit old. He looked at her scars without reaction; you could forget them when you knew her well enough. Someone should do that. Someone should marry her. Anyway, it was quite exciting to sit beside her. She was even warmer than the air.

The music finished. She heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction. “God, I never heard the like o’ that,” she said.

“Once a week all summer,” he told her. “Bring me the good tidings, Mary. How are you here?”

She looked at him steadily and for an uncomfortably long time; then she closed her eves and shook her head.

“Poor Boy nearly went mad,” he said shrewdly.

He saw the anguish in her eyes. “Ah! Tell him…” she blurted out, then stopped.

“Tell him what? ‘Oh yes, and I’ve seen Mary Coen. Yes, she’s in London. No, no particular message, I’m afraid.’ Tell him that?”

“So he…” She could not think of the word.

“He’s bad, Mary,” Caspar said seriously. “He’s convinced you ran away because of what he did.”

She looked uncertainly at him.

“I know what you and he did,” he said, unable to rid his mind of the memory of her nakedness, knowing it was the same nakedness that now lurked only a fraction of an inch beneath the plain brown cotton of her dress.

She knelt up and, walking on her knees, came to sit beside him on the top step. The movement pulled her dress so taut he had to look away.

“Did he tell you?” she asked. Afraid to raise her voice, she put her lips close to his ear. Her hair fell on his shoulder. The smell of her was something…citrus: clean and strong. His neck tingled.

He leaned back, to look her in the eyes. Her blemished side was nearest him; funny, she used to be much more self-conscious about that—always putting herself on the other side. “Of course he didn’t! You should know Boy better than that.” He looked away. “I saw you both. Boy doesn’t know I saw you.” He turned to her again. “But I’m glad I did. If I hadn’t, I’d really have thought he’d gone mad after you ran off. So…what d’you want me to tell him?”

“Say…” She let out all her breath. “Nothing! I can’t tell him.” She began to sob. Not violently. Not loudly. But—to Caspar—all the more heartrendingly for that.

He put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. He forgot his own rather shallow urges and wondered how he could ease her pain. “You must tell someone,” he said. “If you want to tell me, I give you my word I’ll let it go no further. Come on. You can’t keep this…whatever it is…to yourself forever.”

Still she sobbed. “Is there anyone you
can
tell?” he asked.

She shook her head vehemently.

He did not know what to suggest next. He took his arm away and moved to sit a little apart from her.

Then she spoke. “Promise not to tell anyone?”

Caspar thought. “If I think Boy is going to do something stupid, I will tell him—or I will tell him as much as he needs to know in order to stop him.”

“Stupid?” she echoed.

“Of course! I told you—he’s taken it very badly.”

“You won’t breathe to your mammy, though? Nor Mrs. Thornton—nor anyone?”

“That I will promise.”

So she told him.

She told him of the dreadful things Nick Thornton had proposed to her and the night upon night of the remaining holiday he had sketched out for her in libidinous detail—all under pain of exposure of herself and Boy. Once it started there was no stopping her; the story poured out. Her love for Boy. His for her. His impossible ideas about their future. How it all became too much for her, until she fled to the master. How the kind young lady had given her money and told her of Mrs. Thornton’s Refuge. Then the big fat man who told her of a country where they’d think her beautiful and would give her, in a day, more money than she’d see in a year, just to adore her. And Mrs. Thornton finding her, and saying the man was a wicked liar and only wanted to enslave her. And then coming back here.

She was quite calm, almost serene, when she had finished. “What d’you think, Master Caspar?” she asked. “D’you think he was lying?”

“Who? Nick Thornton?”

“No,” she said impatiently. “The big fat fella. Do you think there is a country where I’d be beautiful?”

Suddenly he felt ten years older than Mary. How could he tell her it didn’t matter? How to share with her the insight he had achieved just now—that you forgot her scars when you knew her? He wanted to kiss that side of her face—purely—but he did not dare. Instead he took her hand. “Of course there is,” he said.

“Where? I never was told of it.”

“We
all
love you, Mary. Boy most of all. We went right across Ireland looking for you. We can’t think of Keirvaughan without you. That’s the country where you’re beautiful.”

But when the music started again and he saw her face light up he knew she would never freely go back there again; nothing he could say had half that power over her.

Stay for some supper, Rocks,” Nora said when the last guest had gone. It was not an invitation but a command. Not that Roxby, despite his now fairly dominant position among the country’s younger painters, would have refused an invitation. Too much of his bread was still buttered by Nora and her friends.

“I shall never know where you find the energy,” he said, “even at the best of times. But…in this heat!”

It was a very light supper: quenelles of plover fillets made with
pâte a choux
panadas, followed by
fanchonnettes
garnished with a fanciful design of pistachios and currants; only two wines—a Montrachet ’48 and pink champagne.

Roxby, raising a glass of the champagne to her, asked, “What are we celebrating?”

“My liberation,” Nora answered, toasting him in return.

“Is that what the end of a season represents now!” He chuckled. “How blasé we soon become. Time was when every ounce of your…”

“The end of a season,” Nora interrupted. “Yes. That is it exactly. Just…a season. There will be others, no doubt.”

“To be sure there will,” he said, looking at her somewhat sideways. “Nora, you wouldn’t be ever so slightly tipsy, would you?”

“Why?”

He looked at the wine coolers. “Because there’s two soldiers left to kill—and you surely aren’t relying on me, are you?”

“What a strange thing to worry about.”

He looked away and coughed. “The fact is…” he began.

“No, Rocks!” Nora said.

“The fact is I was going to ask you…”

“Rocks—no!”

“…could you possibly…?”

“No!” She almost screamed the word.

“A hundred. Just a hundred?”

She looked steadily at him, waiting for his eyes to return to her. They did, but too briefly to communicate anything.

“You wouldn’t miss it,” he said. Still she watched him. “Guineas, then?” he added.

He looked at her then. She smiled and shook her head.

“Why not?” he began to whine.

“Because you don’t need it. That’s why. You have plenty of money.”

He drained the champagne and poured another glass, filling hers, too. “How do you know what I need?” he asked lugubriously.

Her laugh said,
What a stupid question!
“Because, dear boy, you made the mistake of letting me manage your finances.”

“
I
did? You gave me no choice.”

“Though what sort of ‘mistake’ it is that gets you from three thousand pounds in debt to…”

“To five thou’ I can’t touch!”

“…to an income of three hundred, I’m sure is a mystery. And you’re earning a good two thousand from your painting.”

“Ah well,” he said, all cheerful again. He sipped his champagne and smiled at her. His whole attitude said,
It was worth a try.

“Why d’you do it, Rocks?” she asked. “Especially why d’you try it on me? You know you haven’t the slightest need of it.”

He giggled. “I don’t know. I just feel I have to touch people for a loan. It’s just a thing.” He buried his face in his hands and laughed silently.

“Go on,” Nora said, laughing already. “Tell me.”

“I touched Billy Holman Hunt for a thousand last week. I don’t know why I did it. I just couldn’t seem to stop myself. We were talking about nature and colour—you know, the old problem—and just out of the blue I asked him for the loan of a thou’. You should have seen his face! You know what he’s like.”

Nora almost shrieked with laughter. “I think it’s a disease. Like Lady Hobo, who keeps slipping off with my silver and then doesn’t know what to do with them and sends her footman out to pop them back through my letterbox. A disease. There ought to be a name for it.”

“Tangomania—the mania to touch people.”

“I didn’t know it was recognized.”

“No, I just made that up. Not bad, is it! I say, am I really earning a couple of thou’ a year?”

“You’re
getting
it. If your celebrated artistic conscience tells you you are also
earning
it, then I suppose you are. It’s still nothing to what you will make before you are finished.”

He smiled at her gratefully, then laid his hands palms upward on the table and looked at them in the way that painters tend to look at commonplace objects—with a critical absorption. “These are the fellows,” he said. “Not me. I don’t earn it. They do.” He looked at her with that same absorption, making her shiver. “Half a painter’s life, you know, is spent emptying this”—he tapped his forehead—“into this.” He held up his right hand and wriggled the fingers. “It’s not safe until it’s down here. But now, this year, for the first time in my life, I begin to feel this fellow actually knows more than I do.”

Nora breathed out, envious and admiring. She took his two hands in hers and squeezed them. “They’ll take you to the very top.”

Snakelike he flipped his hands away and then trapped hers in his much larger grasp. “Got you!” he said.

She looked down at their hands like a remote spectator. “So you have! But what are you going to do with them?”

She delayed returning her eyes to his, but when she did, her gaze was level and unblinking. A light, amused smile parted her lips.

He stopped breathing. She felt his grip tighten, then waver. His tongue darted out and wet the centre of his lips. She had never behaved this way before.

He made a slight movement of withdrawal. She thrust her hands deeper into his. Again their eyes dwelled in each other’s. He cleared his throat.

“Nora,” he said.

“Yes, Rocks?”

“Where is Nanette?”

“In bed, I trust.”

“Why?”

“Because I sent her away.”

He swallowed and stared at her. “Yes,” she said.

Not “Yes?” Not “Yes!” Just yes.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

She laughed. “Oh, Rocks! If I were serious, would I have chosen to sup with you! I seem to have caught a different form of ‘tangomania,’ that’s all.”

***

Next morning she rose early, sent Roxby away, and wrote to Winifred to tell her she was to come to stay at Hamilton Place that autumn and enroll at Bedford College. Then she went to find Caspar.

But he was out, riding with Greaves in Rotten Row, so they did not meet until breakfast.

She was glad of Greaves’s presence. Caspar was such a self-sufficient and secret-keeping fellow it was hard to pin him down in public, impossible in private. With Greaves there he could not be his usual slippery self, at least not so blatantly.

“I’ve been thinking about your wanting to go into business, Caspar,” she said. “Were you quite serious?”

She chose a moment when his mouth was full of devilled kidneys, to give him time to take stock. She herself ate only water biscuits and apple marmalade at breakfast.

“Don’t know, Mama,” he said at length. “There’s a lot in what you said yesterday. I shall have to give it a lot of thought.”

“Well, think quickly. There might just be a very good business opportunity in the offing.”

He pretended to be unmoved but she noticed that his ears twitched.

“Small,” she said judiciously, “but it could show a good return. It might just suit a young fellow.” She did not precisely wink at Greaves but she pulled a complicit face that flattered him into joining her. Both were amused to watch Caspar’s nonchalance crumble.

“You mean an
actual
one?” he said. His heart began to race. What could it be? What could he do—still at school?

“What else?” she answered. Her tone implied it was all very natural. “A real business, real goods, real money. And a real disaster if you fail. Which you very easily could. I just want to see if it’s all talk on your part.”

“How could I do it though?” Caspar laughed nervously, unwilling to believe it. “I mean…staying at school?”

Nora shrugged. “The true business of business lies in overcoming such difficulties.”

Greaves cleared his throat and wiped his lips. “Er…Lady Stevenson…I don’t think Fiennes School could be used as a place of business,” he said diffidently.

“Naturally not,” she answered, not taking her eyes off Caspar. “That would be out of the question. But is there any school rule to forbid a boy from partaking in business with another location—if, for instance, all correspondence was directed elsewhere—not to Fiennes?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I doubt, of course, whether it has ever…”

“If a boy went into the town to buy toffee for half a dozen of his fellows and charged them a ha’penny each?”

Greaves laughed. “Oh, that. I’m sure that would happen every day.” He raised his eyebrows at Caspar, who nodded his agreement. “But the sum involved is so trifling.”

“Or if some young nobleman’s signature or assent were needed in a matter of the family estates during term time, he would presumably not be whipped for it?”

“Naturally not, but…”

“Or if one of your young gentlemen held shares and it were advantageous to sell, he would not be rusticated or gated or striped for doing so?”

And Greaves had to allow, reluctantly, that such activity would be quite in order.

“Well, Caspar,” Nora said, “it seems your school presents no official bar to business, great or small, so long as correspondence is directed elsewhere.”

This exchange had given the boy time to collect himself. “I’d be jolly interested, Mama. I’d certainly give it a fair dose of the old cogitation, don’t you know.”

“Such locutions!” Greaves interrupted, eager to re-ravel some of his authority. “Cogitation is ‘measured,’ not ‘dosed’.”

Caspar accepted the reprimand with a solemn, thoughtful nod. He was glad to have bought back his subordinate position for such a trivial price. “Anyway,” he said, “my mind is too much upon the fives finals today.”

Nora, who had not hoped even for so much commitment as she had got, was pleased enough. “That’s right, dear,” she said. “You go and win your little game, and, by the time you come back, I may have one or two suggestions for you.”

“The ladies—God bless ’em,” Greaves said when he and Caspar were on their way to the fives courts. “They don’t understand the importance of sport in a man’s life.”

“I think, sir,” Caspar said tactfully, “you’ll find Lady Stevenson was merely supporting your timely warning yesterday not to think I must win at all costs.”

If there was anything in this notion of his mother’s, Greaves had to go away with glowing memories of his days at Hamilton Place. And if it were in some way against school rules—those vague rules that dealt with activities which were “not quite the thing”—it would be useful to have a master as a passive accomplice. Even more so if he were an ex-master. When Caspar arrived at that thought he realized he must already be quite taken with this new idea of his mother’s—if it could turn the bitter blow of Greaves’s impending departure from Fiennes into a possible asset.

***

“I won! I say, Mama, I won.” Caspar began speaking as soon as they came through the garden door.

Nora, who was cutting a bunch of roses, looked up in delight. She handed the pruning snips and her gloves to the footman and came to greet them. “Well done, dearest!” She kissed him.

Greaves cleared his throat, as if prompting Caspar.

“Yes,” Caspar said. “It was something of a fluke, right at the last. Until then it was very close. Touch and go.”

Greaves beamed approvingly. “Trentham was a worthy opponent.” he said. “You were well matched.”

“Except that I won, sir,” Caspar could not help adding.

“Well, Mr. Greaves, you are no doubt pining for your family. I cannot tell you how much we have enjoyed your stay—nor how grateful we are for all you have done for Caspar. Today’s win is more yours than his; I’m sure he’d be the first to agree.”

“Indeed, sir,” Caspar said. “Without your help I wouldn’t even have got to the first round.”

“You’re very kind, my boy. But you are a natural player. I have done little but help you to some shortcuts. And as for your kindness, Lady Stevenson, the gratitude, let me assure you, is utterly on my side. This has been one of the most stimulating weeks of my life.”

“How kind you are, Mr. Greaves. I was about to add that if it any time you happen to be passing down Piccadilly and you notice the candelabra in the windows you would be most welcome within.”

Greaves, having fired his big guns on the chitchat, could now only stammer his joy and sense of unworthiness.

“Not at all,” Nora reassured him. “Professor Thomson is not the easiest man to divert. If you found it easy, you have untapped gifts that make you more than welcome here. Now Caspar, come, I have something to show you.”

“I’ll come and see you off at the station, sir,” Caspar promised over his shoulder.

“I thought we got rid of him rather well,” Nora said when they were well out of Greaves’s earshot. “I don’t suppose he’ll come down to London too often, do you?”

Caspar did not know what to say that would not be disloyal to Greaves or that might not unwittingly reveal something (though he could not say what) to his mother.

The “something” she wanted to show him was a handsome-looking brass and cast-iron bedstead standing rather isolated and forlorn in the ballroom. It was merely the frame. There was no mattress or made-up bed to it.

“What is it?” Caspar asked. Then, seeing his mother’s surprise, he added, “Well, I know
what
it is, of course. What’s it there for?”

“Look at it,” she said.

“It’s a bedstead.”

“Well made? Any faults, would you say?”

“How should I know?”

“You never will unless you look.”

Caspar acted the part of a man knowingly inspecting a bedstead, until he felt too foolish. He laughed nervously. “Honestly, Mama. How should I know!”

“You had better find out, Caspar dear, and quickly, because I rather think that selling bedsteads is going to be your business these coming months.”

Caspar threw back his head and roared with laughter. Great gusts of it echoed down the room and out into the hall. Mary Coen, who was helping to shroud all the furniture in the public rooms, now that the season was over, heard it and smiled. It was a happy house, this. She was going to like being here.