The Flood-Tide (12 page)

It was the beginning of a week of hard work and frustration for William, a week of arguing and persuading, and finally of passionate pleas.

‘You sent Edward to school instead of me! You never let me do anything. I am strong, really I am, if you'll only give me a chance. I keep up with Charlotte, in everything she does. How can I ever make anything of myself if you keep me at home here like a baby? I might as well be dead as stay here like that, to be an invalid all my life.'

‘William, be quiet,' Jemima said. 'No one wants you to be treated like an invalid all your life. But there are other careers open to you that do not need so much physical stamina - the Church, for instance, or the law. What sense is there in taxing yourself beyond your powers?' But in the end, it was his father who came to his rescue. ‘He really seems to care deeply that we sent Edward to school instead of him,' he said to Jemima when they were alone. 'He feels that we slighted him, that we are ashamed of him. I think, whatever we fear, we ought to let him do this, if it is what he wants. He is probably much stronger than we think.'

‘Than
I
think, you mean,' Jemima said, and sighed. 'It is my fault, I know. I try to keep him safe. I didn't know he was so unhappy. I remember you once said you thought we protected him too much. You understood him better than I.’

Allen kissed her. 'We cannot keep them from every danger, whatever we do. And as Thomas says, it is a healthy life.’

Jemima smiled. 'Oh no, you cannot persuade me I am wrong about the hazards involved. I consent to let him take them, that is all. I don't suppose I shall ever see him again—' The smile quivered and broke, and he took her in his arms, and held her tightly.

The worst thing for William was quarrelling with Charlotte for the first time in their lives. Charlotte was always quick-tempered, and that they had not quarrelled before was probably largely due to William's habit of agreeing with her. But that week she was more than usually irritable, and when it was all agreed, and Thomas had departed, having left instructions as to how William should join him and what he would need in his box, she entirely lost her temper. William was still not clear what it had been about. ‘So, you are going off and leaving me!' she had cried. 'I might have known it. Boys have all the luck, and girls have none, but I might have expected you to stand by me, my own twin! Why should you go to sea, and not me! You know it's what I've always wanted, more than anything.'

‘But I thought it was to be with horses you wanted most,' William had said, bewildered. 'You couldn't have horses at sea.'

‘You're jealous because Sorrell's a better horse than yours. But then I'm a better horseman than you - I suppose you were jealous of that, too. So you thought you'd show me. Well, I don't care. Go to sea, and leave me behind, and I wish you luck of it! You'll be drowned first minute, and I shan't care. I'd have made a better sailor than you ever could. It isn't fair. You ought to be the girl, and me the boy. Why should you have everything?’

And she burst into tears of rage, and rushed away. William was sure she had not been making sense, but though temper was nothing out of the way, it was strange to him to be the victim of it, and stranger still not to understand what was going on in her mind. It grieved him terribly not to be close to her. It had only been his determination to prove to his parents that they need not be ashamed of him which had given him the courage even to think of parting from his twin. It had not occurred to him to explain his feelings to her, for he had always thought she understood them better than himself. It had not entered his mind that he needed to say to her, 'It will tear my heart to leave you, but it is a thing I must do.' He had assumed she knew all that.

Their estrangement had lasted until the day he left, and had almost persuaded him to change his mind. But on the last morning, she had come to him before he was up, and slipped under the cover with him, as she had used to do when they were much younger, and hugged him. No words had passed, of explanation or forgiveness, but William felt easier at once. Then she slipped something into his hand - a lock of tough, grey hair, tied into a circle with red thread.

‘It's a piece of Mouse's mane. Josh cut it off for me, before he buried him. Promise you'll keep it with you all the time?'

‘I promise. It will be my talisman, like in the stories,' William had said. Now, by the fire in The Ship tavern, he felt for it in his breast pocket, for reassurance. He might be gone two years, or three. He might not see Charlotte again until she was a young lady, and dressing her hair up. The West India station was the best of all to serve on, everyone said that. He thought of the things he would bring back for her, when he came home again, whenever that would be - shawls, and tortoiseshell combs, and mother-of-pearl brooches, and coral earrings. He might have made a fortune by then. As the flickering fire dried his wet stockings, he dreamed of telling her his adventures, and imagined her gazing at him, open-mouthed but silent with admiration.

CHAPTER FIVE

 With the April wind blowing from a gentler and more springlike quarter, the weather had turned mild, and in a matter of days everything seemed to have burst simultaneously into bud and blossom. A restlessness came over Flora, driving her from room to room in search of company or occupation, but she was out of luck. Allen was away in London again, on some undisclosed business; Jemima was over at Twelvetrees, where five mares had come simultaneously on heat, and two entire colts had fought each other in more than mere play. Father Ramsay, of course, was teaching the children, except for Mary, who had been whisked away by Alison. Mary had grown rapidly and Alison wanted to go over her frocks with her, to see what she needed new. Father Ramsay allowed her to go without regret. Mary was an undistinguished scholar, and had a particularly penetrating sigh which was driving the priest to distraction.

Flora picked up a book and laid it down again, played a few notes on the harpsichord, looked with disfavour at her embroidery frame, and was kneeling on the windowseat in the drawing room, dangling her arms out of the window in a most ungraceful manner, when Rachel, the younger nursery maid, found her.

‘Oh, there you are, miss,' Rachel said, advancing on her with a large white bundle in her arms. Flora wriggled round on the seat and held out her arms.

‘How is she today, Rachel?' Little Louisa, six months old now, was growing heavy, Flora noticed, as she jiggled her in her arms and stared into her face. It was odd how much her features altered, she thought. When she was newborn, she was the image of Thomas; in a few weeks she had begun to favour Flora much more; now, at six months, Flora thought she looked most like her brother Charles.

‘Oh, she's a little nuisance today, miss, and won't settle for anything. I think maybe she's starting a tooth. I was for taking her out in the fresh air for a while, and I thought you might like to see her first.'

‘I'll take her out,' Flora said, glad for something to do, and when Rachel looked doubtful, she added, 'only you must come with me, to make sure I don't harm her.'

‘You won't harm her, I'm sure, miss,' Rachel said out of politeness. 'But come with us by all means, if you like.' She took the baby back from Flora firmly, having been brought up to the opinion that parents should not take too much notice of their children, for everyone's sake. It was quite proper for a mother or father to hold the bairn for a minute or two each day and say how handsome it was growing, but that was all. 'Best let me carry her, miss, in case you rumple your dress.’

Flora, reduced to her proper status again, yielded the baby up and walked meekly in the wake of the nursery maid. Outside, the air smelled so fresh and sweet it roused her restlessness to a new pitch of agony.

‘Oh, how I long for something to do!' she cried aloud, unable to restrain herself. 'Don't you ever get bored, Rachel? So bored you could scream?'

‘I don't have time to get bored, miss,' Rachel said severely, and then, realizing she had spoken out of turn, seeing as Miss Flora was a married lady now, and no more in the province of the nursery, she added kindly, 'You'll be missing Captain Thomas, miss, that's only natural. It is a shame when a man's work takes him away from his home and family. The poor master, for instance, up and down to London, and into York and Leeds and I don't know whereall-else. A man should work in his own house and his own field, that's what my father always said. He had a cousin that went to work in a finishing shed near Leeds, a factory when all's said and done, and he always said it was unnatural. But I suppose a man can't be in the navy without being away from home. I suppose it's all right for a young man that's not married - though I cannot remember being so surprised as when the mistress agreed to let little William go. It'll be a wonder if that child lives to his next birthday - and here's Miss Charlotte pining for him so badly, she'll make herself sick with grief.'

‘Yes, she does seem rather quiet since William went,' Flora said, 'but I suppose that's because she has no one else to talk to. Like me.' A neat twist brought the thread back to its beginning. 'With the mistress out all day, I've no one to talk to and nothing to do. I wish now I'd accepted Lord and Lady Chelmsford's invitation to go to London. At least I'd have had some company there. But it seemed wrong, somehow, with Thomas only just gone away.’

Rachel paused under a blossoming apple tree - they had walked into the orchard - and gauging Flora's mood, said, ‘Well, miss, it doesn't seem to me that it matters whether Captain Thomas went yesterday or two months ago. Gone is gone, and there's no reason for you to stay here and be fretful if you'd sooner be elsewhere.'

‘It's not as if I'm any use to anyone here,' Flora agreed readily. 'Not even to little Louisa, since you won't let me near her.' She pulled the shawl back from the baby's small face and looked down at her. Louisa's dark blue eyes stared past her with a kind of imperial disregard, and her lips pursed as if in disapproval. A white petal, bruised brown at the edges, drifted down and landed on the baby's cheek, and Flora b
^r
ushed it away with a finger. Will she be pretty?' she asked Rachel.

‘Pretty enough,' Rachel granted. Her praise was always meted out as if there were only so much to go round. 'I'll be taking her in in a minute - I know the master thinks fresh air is a cure-all, but it's only April when all's said. Why don't you walk on for a bit, miss? I think your brother's in his garden somewhere.'

‘I see you want to be rid of me. You doubt my influence on the child. Well, perhaps you are right. Take her away, Rachel. I shall go and find Charles, and try to corrupt him instead.'

‘Nay, miss, you shouldn't talk so light,' Rachel shook her head, and hurried the baby away as a mild puff of wind ruffled her wrappings. Flora went on to the American Garden, which was taking shape very nicely now, and found Charles sitting under a tree, smoking a pipe of tobacco.

‘Well, I see I am too late,' Flora called out as she came upon him. 'I meant to come and corrupt you from hard work into idleness, but here you are courting rheumatism by sitting on the wet grass, and doing nothing after all.'

‘I have a sack under me,' Charles said, not offering to rise, and Flora saw in a moment that he was not dreaming happily.

‘What is it, Charles? You seem too melancholy for such a fine day.' He did not reply, and she said impatiently, 'If I cannot sit down, I do think you might at least stand up.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry,' he said, pulling himself to his feet. Even the lassitude of his movements proclaimed him unhappy. ‘One of my orchids has died, and those roots I was storing through the winter have rotted. I shall lose the half of them. It's enough to make one give up altogether.’

Flora eyed him without sympathy.
'That
isn't why you are gloomy. You've lost plants before - hundreds of them. You're thinking about those Americans again, aren't you?' He did not answer. 'Really, Charles, what's the use of thinking about them all the time if it makes you so miserable?'

‘Can't you understand that I'm worried about them?' Charles said. 'They may be in danger, and they are all alone—'

‘Don't be silly,' Flora interrupted. 'Rich people are never alone. And besides, why should
you
worry about them? They are nothing to you - hardly even cousins.'

‘Philippe was very kind to me,' Charles began weakly, and Flora scoffed.

‘Oh, Philippe was kind to you, was he? Come, Charles, you must think me a simpleton. It is the daughter you are thinking about, not the father.' His silence was confession enough. 'Well, it's you who are the simpleton, and I'm sorry a brother of mine should be such a fool. You only met her once, Charles, you don't know her well enough to be carrying on in this way.'

‘Oh Flora, how can you talk like that? How long do you have to know someone to fall in love with them?'

‘You think yourself in love with her? Well then, there's no more to be said. You had better make an offer for her hand, and then you'll carry her off and leave that kind father all alone.'

‘Of course I wouldn't,' he said unguardedly. 'She's her father's heir, so she couldn't come to England. I would have to—'

‘You would have to go and live over there?' Flora shook her head. 'Give up everything, leave your own land, and go and live in a strange country amongst foreigners for the rest of your life, all for a girl you've seen only once?'