Eden Falls (18 page)

‘Mmm,’ Clarissa said in a dampening way, returning to her needlework. Tobias and Isabella exchanged a grimace that said, Let no one hint at the passing of the years, nor make any reference to Mama’s fading looks.

The three white ostrich feathers that Isabella had worn in her hair the previous day, at her presentation at Court, were now in a slender vase on the card table. She had looked exquisite in a white gown by Worth, long kid gloves and a beaded Alençon veil, but had felt utterly cooped-up and frustrated, waiting for almost two hours in a cold anteroom at the Palace, with dozens of other debutantes and their mothers, for her turn to be called. They twittered and squawked like captive birds, and any sense of the honour about to be conferred was quite lost in the crush and the tedium. Some people hid hot-water bottles under their furs, and others sipped hot soup from of flasks, as if they were waiting at the roadside, having lost a wheel from their carriage. Isabella had borne the ordeal stoically enough, but all the time nurturing the mutinous feeling – which she strove to keep from showing in her face – that this custom had deteriorated into a silly pantomime, as pointless for the debutantes as for Their Majesties. There were so many girls! And anyone seemed to be able to come along; indeed, there were peeresses for hire these days, to present those girls whose own families didn’t qualify. Clarissa, with stony indifference, cut those she knew to be guilty of malpractice and murmured a bitter commentary, a litany of disapproval, to Isabella. By the time they were summoned to the Throne Room they were both as tightly wound as watch springs. Granted, thought Isabella, the great state room, decorated in a glorious red, white and gold, was worth a look, and the Yeomen of the Guard, who lined corridors and staircases, brought a proper sense of order and ceremony to the occasion. But it hadn’t been fun; it hadn’t even been especially interesting.

Afterwards, Isabella had had a champagne supper in the Palace, served by powdered footmen. Then the Plymouths’ motorcar was announced and she was brought home. Some of the girls were going on to parties at the Savoy or Claridge’s, but Clarissa had developed a nervous headache and Isabella, who knew well enough that the rest of the Season was packed with engagements, had decided to be docile. She did wonder, though, how soon the lovely Worth gown could have another airing. The tulle ballerina dress, adorned at the bodice with silk camellias, deserved a proper outing, a spin around a dance floor in the arms of a handsome beau.

The drawing room door opened and Padgett, the butler, said, ‘The Countess of Netherwood,’ stepping back as Thea stepped forwards. She smiled, though at the room rather than the people in it. Her legs, startlingly slender, were clad in miraculous stockings that seemed to shine as if silver-plated, and this effect only emphasised the boldness of the hemline of her pewter silk dress. The fabric looked slight and expensive. Below the hips, it was pleated; above them, it clung like a second skin. With a small shrug Thea discarded the Arctic fox tippet from her shoulders directly into Padgett’s waiting hands.

‘Darling,’ she said to Isabella. ‘How were the Royals?’

‘Oh, we’ve done all that,’ said Isabella with a dismissive wave. She was chilly and discouraging, and had been since her discovery. Clarissa looked up, and smiled at her daughter.

‘Funny little thing,’ Thea said, simultaneously condescending and maddeningly, sweetly affectionate. ‘Oh well. Let me tell you what I’ve been up to.’

Isabella looked startled, and glanced across the room at Tobias. He was draped crosswise on a button-backed armchair, watching his wife with an idle smile. As he was here, he might as well watch the show.

‘Eugene took me to the Slade,’ she said, all alight. ‘The art school, right? He has a friend there, studying life drawing under the most terrifying man I have ever met. Eyes like a shark and a great beaky nose, and a withering disdain for his fellow man, especially if she’s a woman.’

Clarissa leaned forwards and pulled the brass bell pull for Padgett, or anyone else whose entrance would disrupt Thea’s flow. She said to Tobias, ‘The Maharaja of Jaipur is in town, I hear.’

Thea laughed, a short bark of amusement and pity; Clarissa’s tactics were so clumsy. ‘So,’ Thea went on blithely, ‘this awful fellow was stalking about the studio growling and sneering at the students, and in the middle of them all was a young man, absolutely bare. Imagine!’

Tobias gave a snort of laughter.

‘I know,’ said Thea. ‘Classic. Anyway, the beaky tutor threw me out. Girls and boys don’t mix at the Slade, especially nude ones.’

Isabella, leaning against the mantelpiece, arms folded, was miffed. She’d had all the attention, and she could have kept it, but she had handed it on a plate to Thea. Now she was torn between fascination with the story and sheer bewilderment at the ease between her brother and his faithless wife. Her own frostiness, liberally doled out, seemed to be having no effect at all; Thea shone in the centre of the room, glowing with style and charisma and supreme confidence. She was invincible, thought Isabella with grudging admiration; she was a life force. Small wonder Mama’s manners had deserted her; with Thea in the room, every other woman was at a disadvantage.

Behind them all, the door opened and the solemn figure of Padgett stepped back into the drawing room.

‘Your Grace?’ he said. It was almost time for luncheon, and his duties were manifold, but nevertheless he was the duchess’s eternal servant and nothing was too much trouble: all this was somehow conveyed in his voice and bearing. ‘You rang.’

Clarissa, casting about for a job for him, caught sight of the empty grate and said, ‘Thank you Padgett. It’s a little chilly in here, and I thought it would be nice to have a fire after all.’

‘Mama, do you think so?’ said Tobias. He panted and pulled at his collar comically, and his mother said, ‘You think only of yourself, Toby. Archie, as you ought to know, mustn’t be in a draught.’

‘You make him sound like that tortoise Izzy used to have,’ Tobias said, and Isabella, drawn into better humour by the aptness of the analogy and the memory of her pet, said, ‘Sir Terence – how I miss him still,’ and Tobias laughed.

‘Sir Terence, that’s right. From a street market in Alexandria all the way to Netherwood in Great-Uncle Richard’s carpet bag.’

‘What became of Sir Terence?’ Thea asked. ‘I would’ve liked to meet him.’

In perfect unison, Isabella and Tobias said: ‘Being a creature native to a strip of coastal desert in the south-east Mediterranean basin, Sir Terence was constitutionally unsuited to the draughty conditions of a box in the scullery of Netherwood Hall,’ and then they both hooted with delighted laughter at their double act, still word-perfect after ten years. Thea, excluded from the joke but still smiling good-naturedly, said, ‘What’s that?’

‘The post-mortem,’ Tobias said. ‘It was magnificent. Papa sent dead Sir T to one of his old Cambridge tutors. We all gathered in the drawing room to hear the professor’s diagnosis. Somehow it made up for Sir Terence’s demise that his autopsy was so dignified. They kept hold of him, I believe. Pickled him, or stuffed him, I suppose.’

The Duke of Plymouth suddenly materialised, sticking his head and long neck round the door of the room in a manner that could certainly be seen as tortoise-like, now that the seed of that idea had been planted. In their joint effort to remain straight-faced, Thea, Isabella and Tobias felt uncommonly fond of each other. Sensing this, Clarissa stalked out of the room just as her husband came in, leaving him with the sad impression that he had offended her simply by existing.

Henrietta was supposed to be joining them for luncheon at the Park Lane mansion, but in the end they sat down without her. She was increasingly unreliable. Thea said she’d seen Anna Sykes at the Slade and, according to her, Henrietta was terribly involved with the Women’s Exhibition at Prince’s Skating Rink in Knightsbridge. Anna herself had painted a life-size canvas of women sowing grain; it was up with Sylvia Pankhurst’s work at the exhibition.

‘The theme is, “They who sow in tears shall reap in joy” and there are suffrage plays and a suffragette drum-and-pipe band.’ Thea had a look of someone trying to give a serious account of something she thought fundamentally ridiculous.

‘Good Lord,’ said Archie. Increasingly, he found the modern world upsetting. ‘Gels playing fife and drum. Good Lord.’

‘I’m going to have a look tomorrow,’ Thea said. ‘I’ll take you if you like, Archie. They have a soda fountain, Anna says, paid for by an American suffragist.’

Clarissa said, ‘Anna this, Anna that. Do we know her?’

‘Anna Sykes. Rabinovich, as was,’ said Thea. ‘She painted my rooms at Netherwood Hall.’

‘Oh, the little Russian,’ said Clarissa, as if this was the dullest possible answer. ‘Henry mixes with the oddest people.’

‘Anna Sykes has a waiting list of extremely distinguished clients, Clarissa,’ said Thea with a patient smile. ‘If you don’t have an Anna Sykes wall, you simply haven’t arrived.’

Clarissa lifted a finely drawn eyebrow. ‘Oh, speak for yourself,’ she said. ‘The rest of us can justify our place in society without the help of a Russian émigrée, thank you very much.’

‘Soda fountain, you say?’ said Archie, still one topic behind.

‘Mmm.’ Thea pushed a piece of salmon around her plate. She looked up from the fish and at the duke, of whom she grew fonder each day – in direct proportion to her dislike of his wife. ‘You don’t have them here. Where I come from, you find them in drugstores. They’re fun. Delicious.’

He nodded as she spoke, eagerly trying to decipher what she said. His hearing was letting him down, added to which Thea, with her American drawl and odd vocabulary, very often had him stumped. Currently, he was wondering what a drugstore was, and it irritated Clarissa to see him gazing like a milksop across the table, his pale blue eyes shining with a sort of baffled devotion.

‘Toby,’ she said, turning to her son in a determined manner. ‘I’d like you to speak to Henry. I fear she’s being exploited by those horrid people. She imagines herself indispensible to the cause, when in actual fact all they want from her is her money.’

‘I’d like to know where you got the idea she might listen to me,’ Tobias replied. He nodded at Padgett, who refilled his glass with some of the duke’s excellent hock.

‘Have you ever heard Henry speak?’ Thea, directing her question at Clarissa, knew the answer to it, but asked anyway.

Clarissa said, ‘Well, of course not!’ and she smirked around the table, looking for someone to share her incredulity.

‘Then, with all due respect,’ said Thea, ‘I don’t think you’re qualified to pass judgement. Henry is magnificent on a podium. If anyone can shame Mr Asquith into making concessions, it’ll be her.’

‘I think I know my own daughter, thank you.’

‘And yet, I think you don’t, if you imagine she’d let anyone take her for a ride.’ She rose, suddenly and unexpectedly, and the footman stepped smartly forwards, reaching for her chair just a few seconds late.‘Will you all excuse me?’ she said. ‘I feel a little nauseous.’

Thea trailed away and out of the door, seeming not so much ill as weary or, perhaps, bored. Tobias let his eyes follow her until she left the room. He didn’t seem particularly concerned, thought Isabella, but neither did he seem entirely indifferent. For a moment no one spoke, and then Clarissa said, ‘She’s terribly cold, I think, your wife.’

Tobias gave a strange, secret smile, looking not at his mother but down into his glass of wine. Opposite him, Isabella felt the onset of tears. Her Season would be spoiled by this selfish family of hers, with its horrible, internal battles and stubborn preoccupations with private interests. She stood too, and her mother snapped out a brittle command to sit down.

‘I shan’t,’ Isabella said. ‘Why should I oblige, when everyone else is being perfectly beastly?’ And she exited the dining room, leaving the duke, the duchess and Tobias gazing gloomily at each other, like the last, unwelcome guests at a party, marooned together not by choice but by circumstance, long after the band has packed up and gone home.

J
ust as the poached salmon was being served in the Duke of Plymouth’s gilded Park Lane dining room, Lady Henrietta Hoyland was being escorted by two constables from the foyer of the Women’s Exhibition to the lowlier confines of Sloane Street police station, where she was made to wait on a hard bench in a small holding cell for four hours before being released without charge. Someone had daubed a slogan on the wall of St Stephen’s Hall in the Houses of Parliament, and the trail had led to Henrietta on the flimsy pretext that the culprit had been glimpsed darting into a waiting motorcar after committing the outrage. The same person, it was presumed, had tied a jaunty ‘Votes for Women’ flag to the statue of William Pitt the Younger, whose stony expression only served to increase the poignancy of his helplessness. Instead of proclaiming her innocence, Henrietta had said as little as possible, leaving it to the police to work out that she had a copper-bottomed alibi, having been on the programmes and pamphlets stall at Prince’s Skating Rink in the company of Sylvia Pankhurst and Eva Gore-Booth from eight in the morning until the moment of glory when she was marched from the building. There was nothing quite so effective at lending weight to a cause than for one of the organisers to be wrongly accused in so public a manner.

It wasn’t the first time Henrietta had been hauled away from a gathering by police officers, and it always amused her to see them struggle between duty and inclination. Taking her details at the station, she had given Fulton House, Belgravia and Netherwood Hall, Yorkshire as her places of residence, and the young constable had blushed furiously as he completed the formalities, then apologised as he showed her to the holding cell. Here was a titled lady, to whom he would doff his cap if their paths crossed on a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park, and yet he had to log her presence in the book and lock the door on her, just as he had with every other sneak thief and chancer they’d collared in the course of the day. In deference to her class she was offered a cushion, which she declined with a cursory shake of the head.