The Lorimer Legacy (24 page)

In the meantime, left alone for an hour or so, she used the mechanical movements of walking to calm her disordered system. Her years as a medical student had accustomed her to explore new areas on foot, and there would be time enough after she began to make acquaintances in San Francisco to discover whether the conventions of the city approved such freedom. She was equally accustomed to steep slopes – and indeed, as she climbed the switchback hills she found herself irresistibly reminded of Bristol. True, most of the roads in San Francisco climbed straight up the hills, while the narrower lanes which tackled the gradient from the Avon waterfront to the Clifton heights curved in a manner more considerate to the horses which plodded up them. But there was the same feeling of exhilaration as the brow of a hill was approached, the same freshening of the wind, the same smell of the sea. The skies, too, were grey here today just as they so often were in Bristol, filled with clouds which did not bank oppressively but scudded across the sky like the sailing ships which Margaret remembered from her youth. They promised rain, but were in too much of a hurry to deliver it. An illogical association of ideas had caused Margaret, before she arrived, to connect California with gold and gold with brilliant sunshine. She had expected brightness of San Francisco and did not find it, but the misty dullness which greeted her instead did
not come as a disappointment. Rather, it seemed almost a welcome, an invitation to feel at home.

There were other resemblances between San Francisco and her childhood home, sometimes requiring a subtle eye for their recognition. The houses she passed, built of shingled wood, were less substantial than the solid stone crescents and squares of Georgian Bristol, and more colourful in their various choices of paint. Nevertheless, they had the same smell of money about them. As she climbed Lombard Street Margaret – a stranger to the city – had no means of knowing whether Russian Hill was an area more or less wealthy than the average; but the atmosphere was one which she found instantly familiar. The merchants who had lived in the terraced tiers of the Bristol hills had for the most part been in the third generation of wealth, pausing for a few years before -like one of Margaret's own ancestors – they took the final step in the hierarchy of trade and built themselves mansions on the Clifton heights. The residents of this part of San Francisco, she felt instinctively, were poised in exactly the same way – rich already, but not yet quite prepared to take the final step into ostentation. She wondered where that final step, when it came, would take them.

There would be plenty of time to find out. Meanwhile, she took a few steps more herself and was brought to a halt in delight. In front of her now the ground fell away, and if she allowed her gaze to drop to the nearest part of the coastline, where scores of ships were busily loading and unloading, she could have pressed even further the parallel with Bristol and its prosperous trade. But instead she stared at a view far more beautiful than anything her home port had ever been able to offer, of a wide vista of wooded heights rising on the far side of the bay.

As though in welcome, the wind gave a last strong
scurry that tugged her hair untidily from its imprisonment under her hat and at the same time parted the clouds above to reveal a canyon of clear sky. The water of the bay responded, changing before her eyes from grey-green to sparkling blue. Margaret breathed deeply in the crisp, fresh air, taking the city to her heart. The atmosphere was at the same time reassuringly familiar and excitingly new. She could be happy here.

Half reluctantly, she turned to go back. Alexa would be returning to the hotel soon, and then they must go together to inspect the apartment. As she began the steep descent, she noticed someone coming up the hill towards her. He was dressed as smartly as any English gentleman – although his high hat and frock coat were of a style which had gone out of fashion in London a good many years ago: a fit resident, she thought idly to herself, for this district which she had identified as a prosperous one. As they approached and passed each other, he raised his hat.

‘Morning, ma'am.'

He continued on his way with a briskness which made it clear that he did not expect any acknowledgement, but the effect upon Margaret was one which he could not possibly have imagined. Taken aback, she stood still. Did he know her? Did she know him? She turned back to look at him, but he was continuing on his way without any pause. It must simply have been a courtesy. Margaret was well aware that she would need to accept new social conventions in a foreign country. Until she learned what they were, she must try not to be surprised. And yet this small matter disturbed her, nagging at her mind as she walked on. Was the gentleman perhaps one of the many who had welcomed them on the previous day? She had been too tired at the time to be properly conscious of names or faces. He might have seen non-recognition in
her eyes even as he spoke, and hurried on to avoid embarrassment to either of them.

But there was another possibility. Abruptly, Margaret changed direction, turning towards the harbour. It was time to bring out of the back of her mind the thought which she had pushed aside throughout the long journey.

It was possible that, just over twenty-seven years ago, David Gregson had landed at the very harbour which she was now approaching. And if he had done so, if he had stayed in San Francisco and made his fortune, he might at this moment be living in one of the shingled houses on Russian Hill. He could even have been the gentleman who raised his hat to a woman whose red hair was blowing untidily in the wind, because he recognized her as the woman he had once wanted to marry.

He could have been – but in fact he was not. The man had been a stranger, and in any case too young to be David Gregson, who would be fifty-six by now. On that point at least Margaret could be definite with herself. The only importance of the stranger was the reminder he had brought that at any moment she might come face to face with her one-time suitor.

It was time to put the probabilities to herself methodically, and to accept them. There was only one chance in four that David had come to San Francisco at all. Even if he did come, there was no reason why he should stay. As a man without fortune, he might have looked for land in some less developed part of the continent. Or he might have been tempted by the prospect of gold to travel north to Alaska. He might even be dead.

Suppose all these guesses were wrong. Suppose he were alive and living in San Francisco, what could it mean to her? He had had plenty of time to make a life without her. Long ago he would have acquired a wife, children, a career of some sort. If he were to meet
Margaret in the street by chance, the first likelihood was that he would not even recognize her. And if he did, he would not raise his hat to her, with all the risks that such a greeting would entail. He would cut her dead, and would be quite right to do so. Margaret herself would have no right to complain. David had parted from her in well-justified anger. She had no claim on his loyalty – and had not even been faithful to his memory herself. Her husband, Charles, had monopolized her love not only for the brief period of their marriage, but through all the unhappy years when it seemed that the feud between their two families would separate them for ever.

Margaret was a sensible woman. She knew well enough how foolish it was, and how illogical, to allow her thoughts to ramble in this way. Only the tiredness caused by the rough sea voyage and the long railroad journey, combined with the strain of starting a new life in a strange place, could explain why she found herself staring at every man she saw with both apprehension and hope. With a last clutch at rational behaviour she asked a passer-by to direct her by the quickest route back to the hotel, and a cable car took her almost to the door. Her head was swimming, and she found it impossible to tell whether it was her mind or her body which was on the point of collapse. Her final resolve, as she lay down on the bed for a short rest before Alexa's return, was that she would not allow herself to think of David Gregson again.

Amateur nurses regard sleep as the best cure for almost any illness. Alexa could not imagine what had caused the nervous and physical collapse which had overwhelmed her sister on the day after their arrival in San Francisco, but she was reassured rather than frightened by the prolonged drowsiness which followed it. Margaret was still asleep now, in a darkened bedroom; and Robert had gone off to play with his new schoolfriend, Brad. Alone in the drawing room of an apartment on Van Ness Avenue, Alexa was singing a duet with Enrico Caruso.

Caruso – in the flesh – had sung with Alexa before, on the stage of the Opera House at Naples. It was almost certainly his approval and recommendation which were responsible for her invitation to San Francisco. But it happened that they had never performed
Carmen
together, so she had accepted with amusement and pleasure the loan of what she called a gramophone but its owner described as an Edison-box. Caruso himself would not be coming west from New York until April, but the revolving cylinder of wax from which his voice emerged with surprising richness gave her the opportunity to practise harmonizing her voice with his.

She was startled by Margaret's sudden entry into the room – and it was easy to see that Margaret herself was flustered; for although she had dressed, her appearance lacked its usual neatness. Alexa smiled mischievously as she watched Margaret trace the tenor voice to its source.

‘Did you fancy that I was entertaining a gentleman here in your absence?' she teased.

‘Indeed I did, and I was very much upset to believe
that I was neglecting my duties as chaperone so early in our stay.' Margaret made her way to a sofa and sat down as the song came to an end. ‘I find myself in every way confused. This is not our hotel room, is it?'

‘No,' agreed Alexa, and could not resist continuing to tease for a moment. ‘I hope you feel rested after your nap.'

‘I can't remember ever having a sounder night's sleep,' said Margaret.

Alexa laughed, and went across the room to kiss her sister. ‘You have slept almost without a break for six days,' she said. ‘You allowed us to move you here from the hotel in a kind of dream, and once a day you have been sufficiently awake to take a little food, but you have always gone straight back to sleep again.' The horror on Margaret's face increased her amusement. Alexa knew well enough that laziness on such a scale must seem unforgivable to someone as briskly hard-working as Dr Margaret Scott. ‘Had you been your own doctor, a rest of this kind is just what you would have prescribed for yourself,' she said. ‘If you hadn't collapsed like that, you might have become really ill.'

‘I'm never ill,' protested Margaret. It was true that Alexa could remember only one occasion, in the twenty years since she had been adopted, when her guardian had allowed an over-wrought mind to sap her body of its natural strength, and that was when Charles Scott had died only a month or two before Robert was born.

‘You have not been ill now.' Alexa did her best to be reassuring. ‘You were very tired, that was all – and it was hardly surprising. I blame myself greatly for inflicting such a journey on you. When you had all the strain of packing up your possessions and leaving your friends and reconciling yourself to a new life amongst strangers, it's no wonder that you should be affected by the weeks of
such discomfort. Besides, you had hardly had time to recover from your earlier voyage to Jamaica and back.'

‘But six days! And one of your reasons for asking me to come was in order that your entry to San Francisco society should be conventionally chaperoned!'

‘It has all fallen out magnificently,' Alexa assured her. ‘I have refused all formal invitations until you should be ready to accompany me, and the result has been to make us the most sought-after guests in the city. Strait-laced mammas who were alarmed at the prospect of a gold-digging English singer getting her claws into their darling sons are now even more perturbed by the prospect of some other hostess being preferred to themselves. We shall have to consider seriously who is to be allowed the honour of entertaining us first. Our future social status may depend on it.'

‘You sound happy, Alexa. I'm glad to hear it.'

Alexa's true feelings were more complicated than she intended to reveal, even to Margaret. She had determined to show herself to the whole world as light-hearted, and was glad that the person who knew her best was willing to accept what she said at face value.

‘I seem to have been surrounded by kindness and admiration ever since we arrived,' she said. ‘In Italy, it's normal for a prima donna to be feted, so I'm accustomed to being spoiled, but I confess that I hadn't expected it to happen here, where I am not well known. I'm sure you must have had secret doubts about the wisdom of our journey, and so sometimes did I. It's delightful to be surprised in such a way. In fact, I find this in every respect an unexpected city. Do you know that there are no fewer than seven theatres? And that two of them are offering opera seasons? Anyone who disapproves of my Carmen at the Morisco Opera House will only need to move to the Tivoli to hear Tetrazzini's Gilda instead. It's
a good thing to have a rival. Competition creates an atmosphere of excitement.'

‘As long as you emerge as the champion,' Margaret suggested.

‘She sings nicely enough, but she is too fat!' Alexa dismissed Tetrazzini with a flick of her own slim wrist. ‘Well, I must wait until I have made my début before I can be quite sure. But I think I shall want to stay. And – ' Alexa allowed her voice to change, making her next remark so deliberately casual that it must appear tentative. ‘I think I may decide to marry.'

Margaret made no attempt to hide her incredulity. ‘You can't have met someone in so short a time!' she exclaimed.

‘That was only a statement of intent. It doesn't mean that I'm interested in any particular man.' She allowed herself to be serious. ‘I've loved Matthew for twenty years, Margaret – ever since you first took me to Brinsley House as a child. I know that I must make myself forget him. But it's so difficult, when he himself has done nothing to hurt me. I tell myself that there's nothing to be done, that we must never meet again. Ever since the night of Lord Glanville's ball, I've been trying to put Matthew out of my mind; and I can't do it. Well, perhaps a husband would be able to help me.'