The Velvet Glove (17 page)

9

On Sunday afternoon, before the arranged dinner party at Charnbrook, Emily and Walter visited Woodgate to make sure everything was well with their daughter and family, and with the information that they also had been invited to meet the American guests the following evening.

Rick had a wary look in his eyes for Kate as his in-laws gave the news. During the week his wife had been stubbornly silent about the subject whenever he referred to it and, although he had little doubt she’d agree to going without a further scene, still with Kate he could never be a hundred per cent certain. So he was relieved when she merely said with cool, apparent indifference, ‘Oh, yes, I shall be there, although I expect it will be rather boring. But Rick doesn’t fancy appearing without me. I suppose in America it would be considered infra-dig for one to go without the other. Aren’t they very family-minded in Boston?’

A slight frown puckered Emily
’s forehead. ‘I don’t know about that.’ After a slight pause she continued, ‘You feel all right, don’t you, dear? You’re not overtired or anything?’

Kate sighed.
‘Don’t fuss, Mama. Why should I be tired? What have I to do?’

‘
Well, with a house to run, two young children to care for, and another on the way, I should have thought there was plenty,’ Emily retorted a little more sharply.

‘
Nursemaids and servants have their duties and they don’t like being interfered with,’ Kate answered shortly. ‘And Rick’s fussy over me not lifting anything or attempting any household chores in my – delicate state, although I must say he expects a good deal of me as a hostess.’

Emily was troubled.

As they drove away she said to Walter, ‘I’m concerned about our girl; she seems bitter over something, and that’s not like Kate.’

‘
Forget it,’ Walter remarked, although he was bothered himself. ‘You can’t do any good by fretting. Families have good days and bad days. If there was anything really troubling her she’d let us know. As far as I can see Ferris makes a good husband, and they’re fond of each other.’

‘
They
were
.’

‘
What do you mean –
were
?’

‘
Before all this moving-picture business got such a hold on him. A woman wants other things than business about her when she’s expecting. But whenever we’ve seen him lately – not often I grant you – still, each time he’s on about America and future this, future that – so you hardly know where you are. There’s other things than money too. Were you any happier after you made your pile, Walter? No. Life’s easier, of course, we see places, and have things we’d not got before, but it’s only the kind of
way
we lived that’s different not the quality. You’ve always had a thought for me. But Rick these days seems forever bent on going somewhere else and grabbing something new. A real buccaneer!’

Walter laughed.
‘Come on now, Emily, you’re imagining things.’

Buccaneer, he thought, the very idea. And yet in a way apt. Ferris did have a certain dominant
‘eagle’ look about him these days.

He did his best to dispel the slight discomfort Emily
’s words had caused him, and on the appointed evening the American couple arrived at Charnbrook looking the picture of well-contented, middle-class affluence. To Rick’s satisfaction the men found instant rapport, possessing a similar down-to-earth recognition of a changing new world ahead. Both though sturdy patriots to their own soil, had a hankering to have a ‘finger in the other’s pie’ – a nibble of a social and business crust, so to speak.

Hiram to look at was large, slightly portly, with a genial smile and shrewd dark eyes that suggested a hint of Mexican forebears, rather than the Scots ancestry he boasted of. Eileen
, his wife, referred to her connection to a Cornish grandfather who had emigrated to America during the mining crisis. She was small and plump, displaying diamonds that must have cost a fortune and a vital personality and laugh that inevitably reduced any faint unease of shyness in the party to a minimum. Only Olivia, despite a façade of graciousness, remained subtly aloof. She was watching Jon from time to time. He made it his business to avoid Kate as much as possible, which wasn’t difficult as Kate kept in the vicinity of her mother and Hiram’s wife. At dinner she was placed between her mother and the American’s daughter.

Elizabeth Carcodale, a rather gaunt, tall, horsy-looking girl, obviously found Jon attractive. She was not good-looking, but neither was she plain, and she certainly had the gift of conversation and telling an amusing tale. In spite of himself, Jon found he hadn
’t lost the ability to smile. After dinner, while Wentworth took Rick and the older men to the billiard-room for a smoke and Olivia entertained the feminine guests in the drawing-room, Jon was diverted from any chance embarrassing encounter with Kate by a request from Elizabeth to show a collection of his photography – mostly stables of horses – a wish encouraged enthusiastically by her mother, and approved by Olivia, only grudgingly, since it meant a private session for the two young people in the Hon. Jon’s study, which was not, on such a short acquaintance, exactly protocol. Still, in this case, considering her son’s distressed state of mind, and the fact that he would probably be leaving with the Americans when they returned to the States, such a point as convention appeared almost a triviality. Anything was better than seeing him as he was; and as William had pointed out earlier, a possible friendship between the two young people could ease many of their financial problems. It was unfortunate from a traditional point of view that money nowadays seemed to be in so many wrong hands, socially. In Olivia’s young days a girl with such a dreadful accent would never have been accepted by the aristocracy. But if anything
did
come out of this new acquaintanceship – and she sensed William himself had given the idea an optimistic thought – he really seemed to have no sense of true pride these days – the couple would not be under their feet all the time, but mostly those long miles away across the Atlantic in Boston.

The result of that evening was more amicable than might have been expected from Kate
’s point of view. Rick agreed to leave Charnbrook at an early hour which meant the removal of any undercurrent of stress in the gathering, leaving Jon free to discuss Hiram’s proposal for him as publicity trainee and photographer with the new moving-picture firm in America.

*

The Carcodales decided to leave Britain earlier than was expected, after acquiring the Dower House at a considerably higher price than had been expected by the Wentworths.

During the few weeks before departure Jon
’s nerves relaxed and, fortified by his deepening friendship for Elizabeth Carcodale he was able to look back on the past tragedy of Cass’s death more reasoningly. He realized the cruelty of his own behaviour to Kate, but considered she’d deserved it, recalling the compulsive heady sexuality of her presence and her closeness to him on that dreadful day. She should never have been there, he told himself more than once, as the memory swept over him.

However much she might deny it –
she’d
wanted
him. Secret lusting was as bad as technical unfaithfulness; and in retrospect he decided anything could have happened in those heady moments of anguish, loss and longing.

Thus he forced himself to reason in justification over his damning confrontation with Rick. It was right he knew the type of woman he
’d married. And anyway Ferris was no saint himself. So let them solve their own future, which no doubt would be what they deserved.

America lay ahead.

Once there, in a new enterprising and remunerative occupation he might, in time, be able to erase the torture of Cass’s death to the back of his mind – even eventually to forgetfulness.

In this way Jon
’s problem was solved.

10

Kate expected her baby in December, and by November there were times when she wondered how she’d ever get through to the date. Rick was away a good deal and, although during the times he was at Woodgate he was polite and always saw she had everything for her comfort, he remained aloof and succeeded in an unsmiling way of shutting her from his personal life.

She went to bed early those days; if both happened to be in a lounge or the drawing-room, he would be quick to open the door for her, incline his head and say a brief
‘Goodnight’, but there was never a touch between them – no contact at all unless it was a brief brush of silk as she passed, followed by the closing of the latch, and her figure moving into the shadows by the stairs.

Every night he was at Woodgate she would lie wakeful, sometimes for hours, listening
with ears keyed and senses alert in the wild hope of his footsteps emerging along the landing, and not pausing until he came to her own door. Then the pause and turn of the knob, and he would be there at last in his rightful place, a tall figure looking down on her – Rick! her husband and lover.

But it never happened.

At first, during the long estrangement she’d told herself it would be different when the baby came. He would
know
it was his. He’d
have
to – she’d somehow prove it. And if it was a boy – but now even that eventuality failed to rouse her. She was too exhausted to hope any more.

‘
You look tired,’ Rick said surprisingly one day. ‘Do you see the doctor regularly?’

A flicker of life stirred in her.
‘He calls every day. But of course you wouldn’t know being in London so much. He says I’m all right.’

‘
Good. It would be a pity for the twins to have an ailing mother so young in life.’

The brief warmth in her froze. The twins!
Marged and Felicity! – always the twins. It was as though he cared for nothing of his own but his possessions, his business and the two tiny girls he knew were his. At first in the early period of the rift she’d been jealous of the sudden look of ardour on his face whenever he looked on them, the blaze of tenderness in his dark eyes. Now she felt merely dull resentment; she wished frequently she had no children at all. During his brief periods at Woodgate he made it so increasingly clear that she personally was merely a chattel in his life.

In early November she decided she couldn
’t stand it any longer. Rick was away on a brief visit to London, and would be returning that night. She had been sleeping badly recently, partly due to the restlessness of the baby that should be born in a few weeks, but mostly the result of her deep unhappiness. Why should it be so? Why should she be forced into such a hell of misery at such a time and for something that was no fault of her own? Well, perhaps she’d been a little unwise with Jon that fateful day, she thought at times. But there were better, kinder things than wisdom. Rick was wise in a shrewd cold way – in business, in stocks and shares and companies and getting his own way. And ‘having and holding’. But love? His love had proved sterile. And she so needed love at this time –
someone’s
– if not his. Suddenly she knew. She wanted her mother, and her father’s whimsical way of cracking a joke, as he had done when she was upset over anything when she was a little girl. Yes, it was her parents she wanted, with their arms round her so she could cry and cry, and let her grief explode, freed by the comfort of their presence.

She would go to them.

She would go that day before Rick got back, and stay. Her child should be born at Beechlands. Somehow she’d think of an excuse – that Rick was too much away, and she wasn’t well, or – oh, something.
Something
. They would understand. They always had. There’d be no need for details. Just one thing was clear. She had to get to them.

*

The nursery staff were engaged with the children upstairs and the rest of the domestics busy about the kitchen when Kate set off shortly before twelve that morning for Beechlands.

She was wearing a long, thick, grey, hooded cape, and carried only a very light case. No one had a glimpse of her except a gardener from the potting shed, as she cut down a side lane to the paddock. From there she planned to take a short cut along a path through a patch of forest land which led into the lane eventually going to the main road. It would be possible to catch a country bus at the crossroads, she thought vaguely. If not, there would surely be someone willing to give her a lift, a farmer, or friend possibly.

It was very cold. Her mind was exhausted and confused, and her body felt unduly heavy that day. She’d have to think up some explanation she supposed – an excuse for being out on her own wandering in her condition. But just then practical things didn’t seem to matter. She was driven by one compelling thought – to get home. Hazily she recalled the note she’d written to Rick before leaving Woodgate:

Rick
,
don’t
come
looking
for
me
.
I’m
leaving
you
,
and
I’m
not
coming
back
.
Our
life
lately
has
been
a
mockery
.
There’s
no
need
to
worry
about
me
.
Where
I’m
going
I
shall
be
perfectly
all
right
.
And
you
have
the
twins
.

Goodbye
.

Kate
.

It was strange how clearly the words remained in her mind. As she plunged into the spreading thicket of trees through the gate the bare dark branches of trees jigged like immense letters before her eyes in the ri
sing wind –
‘I’m
never
coming
back
–
never
coming
back
.
’
From the leaden sky above flakes of snow fell in only a thin flurry at first, then thicker, filming branches and ground below with white.

She blinked and drew her cloak closer, lifting a cold hand to wipe the frost from her eyes. Soon, as the woodland enclosed the world outsi
de, the path thinned, disappearing at points, emerging only fitfully in treacherous snake-like twists and turns. Her senses became numbed and disorientated; gradually she was aware of nothing any more but the increasing heaviness of her own body, the urgency for sanctuary and rest. But no rest came, only a crippling stab of pain that sent her reeling for support to the trunk of a birch. She clung there till the first agony passed, then went on again. How long she’d been continuing haphazardly between bouts of giddiness and pain, clutching her distended stomach, searching desperately for guidance she had no idea. But at last, like a miracle, a faint rosy glow emerged from a small clearing behind a clump of thorns – only a flicker at first, but a sign of life surely, she thought, suddenly wildly alert – indication of a lamp? Or glow from a fire? A window perhaps? That of a cottage near the road?

With a spurt of energy she made an effort to break through the tangled undergrowth, but it was too much for her. Brambles clawed her face as she fell. Renewed agony struck her with the sensation of a sword splitting her in two. Nothing registered any
more but darkness and pain, and a terrible pushing, then a gigantic rush of relief followed by the thin high crying like that of a wild bird through the snow.

For a brief pause all was still in the forest, as though the thickening snow had laid its silent mantle over the earth. Even the wind was hushed. Then there was a crackle of branches and twigs, and the bent figure of the old Mumper emerged dark among the
other shadows against the whitened earth. A transitory beam of crimson from his fire lit his bearded face, as he bent down where Kate lay with the newly-born child who was already hungry for the milk at her breast. Blood stained the ground; her eyes were shut. Awed, with a primitive fear gnawing his nerves he touched a cheek. The dark lashes parted and fluttered. Very slowly her tired gaze rested on the tiny wet head beside her. The man’s withered countenance under the woollen cap jerked and nodded.

‘
It’s all right, lady, I’ll get ‘elp. Where you b’long lady, eh? You tell old Mumper. That’s me. I won’t ‘arm you, lady – not you nor that little ‘un.’

But Kate was too exhausted to speak. Her eyes closed again and he hobbled off quickly through the undergrowth, anxious only to be away from a scene which might involve him with difficult questioning. It was an hour later before Kate was discovered by a search party organized by Rick who
’d arrived back at Woodgate earlier than expected. The snow had thickened by then, and left no footsteps to guide them. The only clue they had was from a worker at a distant farm who’d glimpsed Kate’s grey figure as she passed some distance away in the trees. Luckily for her he’d thought it strange, recognized her, and told the farmer who’d reported it to the house. This prompt action it was that saved her life and that of the baby who was later to be named Blanche-Rose.