God Is an Englishman (27 page)

Face to face with the imminence of this terrifying odyssey, as she was helped GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 139

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into her watered-silk tartan dress, green velvet hussar jacket that fitted like a sheath, and green tasselled pill-box that tied under the chin and was worn at a military angle, she wished with all her heart that she had accepted Aunt Charlotte’s offer to make a two-day stay at home, before plunging into the unknown. As always, however, the sight of herself in the mirror raised her spirits, and she swung this way and that while the seamstress fluffed out her five petticoats, converting the tartan into a semi-crinoline but a crinoline in which she could at least sit comfortably during the waggonette drive to Windermere.

The astonishing thing was they seemed to have nothing to talk about. They had exhausted their stock of wedding-day small talk long before they drew level with the lower slopes of Helvellyn and with Thirlmere behind them, and the two horses keeping up their level, mile-consuming trot, even the memories of those serene, rooted days in the old house were not mellow enough to hold panic at bay, so that presently, despite the most determined efforts to prevent it, one tear and then two welled up, spilled over, and splashed down on the revers of the little green jacket. The gulp that accompanied them brought him up short, bellowing, in that cavalry man’s voice of his,
“Whoa! Whoa there!”
as he pulled off the road on to a grass verge, with Rydal Fell and Grasmere just ahead, and still some ten miles of open road before she could hope for privacy.

He said, in that same offhand tone, “We’ll give them a breather. Care to stretch your legs?” and when, unwilling to trust herself to speak, she shook her head, increasing the angle of her pill-box by another three degrees, he whistled a few bars of a jaunty tune and, with a show of heartiness she judged to be false, slapped his knees and said, “Now there’s a fool you’ve married, Henrietta! He even overlooked his gift to the bride but no harm done, I remember where I put it. I meant to give it to you when we got back from the church. Try it on, and if it doesn’t fit we’ll get a watchmaker to adjust it first thing in the morning,” and he groped in his side pocket and brought out a package about the size of a cotton reel.

Her absurd little pill-box was now in danger of slipping off alto gether as she fumbled nervously at the seals, making such heavy work of removing the wrapping that he took it from her and stripped it away, revealing a little red box that opened at the touch of a spring.

She caught her breath as the lid popped up and the afternoon sun, stealing like a nosey neighbour between two peaks in the west, lighted upon the loveliest ring she had ever seen, a piece of jewellery almost as arresting as that necklace he had GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 140

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shown her the night they bivouacked under the Pennines. Then, unaccountably, necklace and ring fused in her mind, as she realised that he had remembered her London present after all, and had been withholding it until now, when she stood in such need of a boost, and the understanding of this brought a great gush of relief, for she saw it not as a gift that any woman below the rank of duchess would be happy to accept, but as an indication that he was not indifferent to her terrible uncertainty and nervous exhaustion.

She looked at the ring, then at him, and then at the ring, and the inadequacy of anything she could say robbed her of the ability to say anything at all, but he didn’t seem to expect an acknowledge ment, for suddenly he looked boyish and the cloud of indifference he had trailed since his bustling return from London fell away, expos ing him as the jolly companion he had been up to the moment Sam came blustering into the house and trapped him into making the alliance binding and final.

It was good to see him like this again for it gave her access to him in a way she had very much missed since his proposal. Suddenly the weight of her multiple anxieties was lightened and replaced with a queer but rather pleasurable sensation in the pit of her stomach, of the kind she had felt as a child when something stupendous was about to happen.

He said, gently, “It’s one of the string I showed you. I got rather more than I hoped for the others and Avery, the man who advanced the money, was kind enough to have this one made up when I told him I was to be married,” and when she still said nothing he lifted her hand and slipped the ring down the third finger until it rested, rather snugly, on his mother’s ring. Then he turned her palm so that the sunlight danced across the facets of the ruby like a live and laugh ing thing.

She found her voice at last. “It’s wonderful, quite wonderful…! I’d forgotten all about the necklace, but even if I hadn’t I’d never have dreamed…Oh,
Adam,
I’m such a
greenhorn,
and everyone’s been so kind and so generous, and I never seem to know the right words to say to let them know I realise it. You, and the Colonel, Aunt Charlotte, and all those other people who didn’t even know me, but especially you, Adam, who started it all and now
this
—why, like I said, a queen would be proud to wear it!”

“A queen did,” he reminded her, adding, “one way and another I seem to be putting those stones to better use than the Ranee. But you haven’t noticed something. Turn it round, look at it closely.” She edged it round her finger, relieved to find that it was a close fit and that GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 141

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she wouldn’t be called upon to part with it again, and then, with a yelp of delight,

“The
swan!
The swan on wheels! Why, Adam, it’s…it’s marvellous of you to remember that, it makes me…well…
belong,
if you understand?”

“If you don’t belong now,” he said, chuckling, “that parson was an imposter and you’re hopelessly compromised,” and then he took her in his arms and kissed her just as the Keswick coach topped the rise and came bowling down on them with three outside passengers and a four-chinned-coachman, who raised his whip in acknowledge ment of the spectacle of a young couple embracing on the box of a wagonette. Then the outside travellers raised a ragged cheer, and Adam, not a whit abashed by an audience, lifted his hand but with out releasing his grip on her shoulders, so that she cried out, “For heaven’s sake, Adam…! They’ll carry the news into Keswick, and everyone there will guess it was us!” but she felt happy and secure none the less, for now he was the knight of Seddon Moor again, and she was riding behind him like a princess in a fairy tale, instead of a distracted girl lost in a maze of ignorance and self-doubt.

4

Not that she was done with doubts.

They drove into Windermere just after seven, having rested the horses in Ambleside, a few miles short of their destination. He set her down at The Glades, putting her in charge of a poker-faced housekeeper and telling her he was going to drive on to the livery stable before checking on their train out of Windermere in the morn ing.

She envied him his easy familiarity with the demands of a journey. He seemed to know precisely where to go for information, and what choice to select from a bewildering variety of alternatives in any given situation. He not only carried the name of every town in England in his head but knew the most direct route to it, how many people lived there, and how far it was in measured miles to the next village. He knew about money and clothes and rents and horses and wars and riots. He knew, she suspected, far more than she did about kissing. There was nothing, it seemed, that he did not know, and when the housekeeper ordered the staggering porter to carry their trunks up the stairs, and along a passage to a scrupulously clean but starkly unfamiliar room overlooking the lake, she was reminded of so much that she didn’t know, and how dependent she was, from here on, on his patience and protection. Then the housekeeper dropped a curtsey and left, and the porter dawdled about arranging their luggage in little pyramids, GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 142

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so that she realised he was awaiting his tip, and she had no idea how much to give him and fell back on the role of the grand lady, saying, loftily, “Mr. Swann will attend to you when he returns from the livery stables,” so that he left with a slovenly salute and she thought,
“Swann!
Mr. Swann! It slipped out like that and it’s my name now, and that’s something that hadn’t even occurred to me!
Swann.

Mrs.
Swann. Mrs.
Henrietta
Swann—no, Mrs.
Adam
Swann…!” and suddenly she giggled and hitching skirt and petti coats bounced on the broad double bed in a swirl of recklessness, thinking, “It’s no use pretending, for the more I pretend the bigger the fool I shall make of myself! He’s kind, and he surely knows I’m in that much of a tizzy, so he’ll make allowances, the way he pretended not to notice I was terrified out of my wits when he stopped and gave me this wonderful ring.” But here a malicious little guttersnipe popped up and reminded her that this neutral approach might serve her well enough in daylight but that the sun was already low over the lake, so she went on, even more recklessly, “When it’s dark I’ll just tell him how scared I am, without making any bones about it, and he’ll laugh I daresay, but I don’t mind that, for no one can blame him for laughing and anyway when he laughs he looks much nearer my age, and not nearly half as old again, and a man who has been everywhere and done everything and must know that I haven’t the least idea what is expected of me.” And having, as it were, packaged her doubts into one clumsily tied parcel, she realised she was hungry and thirsty and dirty, and took off her pill-box, jacket, and mittens and put them away in the wardrobe, after which she drank two glasses of water from the night-table carafe and washed her face and hands at the washstand.

She was in the process of unpacking her night-bag to take out her brushes and nightgown when she noted a half-concealed wallpapered door where the roof sloped away in the corner furthest from the bed, and discovered it led to another room with a single truckle bed, a chair, and another washstand and ewer. The discovery comforted her, for at least it was somewhere to hide while she was struggling with corsets that had required the combined services of Aunt Charlotte and seamstress to fasten that morning, and the thought made her ponder the advantages of travelling with a ladies’ maid, who could at least smooth away this kind of difficulty. Then he came stomping in, saying he had ordered dinner and that their train would take them beyond Kendal in the morning to a point where they could hire a fly to Burnley, and then another train would take them to the North Western depot. He said, slipping his arm round her waist, “Imagine that, Henrietta! By this time tomorrow you’ll be running into London, and the day after that you’ll be giving orders in The Spinney. That’s no more than a GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 143

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temporary base, mind you, for I don’t fancy making free with someone else’s staff, furniture, plate, and linen, but it will tide us over until we find a place of our own.

Do you want to change, or will you dine as you are?”

“I can’t wait to change,” she said, “for I’m starving. I was too nervous to do more than peck at all that lovely food Aunt Charlotte prepared for us. Is this a good hotel, Adam? By your standards, I mean, for I’ve never stayed in a hotel in the whole of my life, and I really don’t know how to behave, so you mustn’t mind showing me that…and, well, everything. I don’t mean to remain the little fool that I am.”

She expected him to laugh at that but he didn’t. Instead he put a hand on her shoulder and said, “You’re very far from being a fool, my dear. A fool hasn’t the sense to admit being at a loss and watch, or ask for advice. I knew that much about you within ten minutes of meeting you out on that moor, so don’t ever be afraid of me, do you understand? And here’s something else, since we both seem to be ripe for confession. You doubtless see me as someone very sure of himself but I can assure you I’m not. Oh, yes, I’ve travelled half across the world, but I’m more of a stranger in England than you are, and what’s more to the point I’m a Johnny Raw in the role of a husband! Now let’s eat, and take a glass or two of claret to keep our courage up,” and he armed her out of the room and down the stairs towards a delicious smell of roast duck that made her feel hungrier than she had ever been in her life, not excluding the morning she awoke to find herself alone on Seddon Moor.

5

She never did decide whether it was over-indulgence on her part or a shrewdly managed plot on his, whether the wine was an exception ally high quality table claret, of the kind she had sipped in minute quantities at the Colonel’s table, or something with more body to it, like one of the French wines Sam served his occasional guests, declar ing it “no fit tipple for a bit of a lass.” Whatever it was it not only crowned the day but passed into family legend, surviving as a joke that lasted them down the years.

She ate her gourmand’s meal and after the first brimming glass of the “claret,” the room assumed new and splendid dimensions, so that the sense of detachment that had persisted during the wedding re turned, but with a significant difference, inasmuch as colours were heightened and every sound seemed anxious to whisper a mellow and excessively convivial message, the soft chink of the GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 144

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cutlery, the tune ful rattle of the plates, and above all the intimate rise and fall of his voice, as he entertained her with reminiscences, selected for their diverting qualities and having little in common with the dashing as pects of military life as portrayed in journals and newspapers her father left lying about the house during the Crimean War and the Sepoy Mutiny.