Spare Brides (45 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Good afternoon, I’m here to see Sergeant Major Trent.’

‘Are you now?’ The woman folded her arms under her vast bosoms. Lydia thought of maids plumping the cushions in the drawing room.

‘Yes.’ Lydia was too well brought up to barge past the woman; a lifetime of strict social etiquette did not allow her to charge up the stairs to his attic room as she would have liked, even though she had just left her husband to be with him. She breathed shallowly, impatient with herself. With the world.

‘He’s not in.’

‘Then I shall wait for him.’

‘That’ll be a long wait.’

‘When are you expecting him?’ Lydia tried to summon her best smile, but she was finding negotiating with a woman in a housecoat, whilst standing on the street, embarrassing. The children’s slack-jawed gazes were disconcerting.

‘I’m not expecting him.’

Lydia checked her watch. He would be here soon, no doubt. He’d never made her wait, and in the telegram she’d said she’d be here by two. He’d probably popped out to buy some flowers or cake. ‘Perhaps I could wait in the front room.’

The landlady suddenly appeared sly and amused. She held the door open and said, ‘If you like.’

Lydia perched on the edge of the sludge-green synthetically covered armchair. The room was a tight, unsuccessful space that had aimed at smug respectability and landed somewhere near undesirable pretension. The furniture was solid, but unfashionably wooden and austere. There was too much of it for the small room. There was an enormous sideboard that housed a vast collection of small, ugly ceramic ornaments in the shapes of various wild animals; Lydia could not imagine anyone loving them. There were two armchairs and a wooden table in between. The table was too high for comfort; it was scattered with home-made crocheted mats and dominated by a poorly embroidered runner. A second table doubled up as a cocktail cabinet. None of the bottles were decanted. Lydia noticed that the labels on both the gin and the whisky wore ink marks to indicate how much remained, a mean-spirited attempt to deter guests from helping themselves. Everything was covered in a thin coat of dust and appeared a little sticky. There were no pictures on the walls or chimneypiece. The whole place smelt of mothballs. The landlady did not offer a cup of tea or even a drink of water.

Lydia wondered whether Edgar often sat in this room. She couldn’t imagine it. He was so much more than a man to Lydia. He was a mass, a presence. A geography. A class. Although she had never seen him in his home environment, he was inextricably linked to the mysterious north. When she thought of him, she was reminded of a childhood holiday to the Pennine mountains, the range that formed the backbone of England. At the time Lydia had been somewhat afraid of the bleak, narrow, unknown, chilly, hilly land that was trapped between one churning grey sea and another – the sort of land that Edgar came from – but she’d also been excited by it. Edgar somehow encompassed and exuded the region’s wild, battling spirit of adventure, drama and desire. Maybe it was because he’d been prepared to fight for the land that he seemed to be intrinsically linked to it. He was earthy, virile. In her mind Lawrence was not attached to the land; even though he held the deeds to large chunks of the south, being rich and prosperous and self-serving did not entitle. Whilst the accepted definition of power and prestige lay with Lawrence, and Edgar was considered harsh, uncouth and even dangerous, she could only think of him as he was: uncompromising and brave.

Lydia’s breasts felt heavy; she almost put her hand on her stomach, but she felt the landlady’s eyes trail her and she worried that the woman might understand the gesture. She wished she could take a nap.

She focused on the clock on the mantelpiece. Not long now.

S
ARAH HAD NOT
known what to make of the telephone call. When Dickenson had rung, she’d assumed it was to relay a message from Lydia about some or other social arrangement, but there was something about the maid’s tone that alerted her to a problem.

‘Ma’am, would it be too much to ask for you to come over here?’ Dickenson had asked warily.

‘Is Lydia unwell?’

‘No.’

‘But she’s asked for me?’

‘No, ma’am.’ A pause. ‘She’s gone.’

‘Gone out?’

It sounded as though the girl was near to tears. ‘Please don’t have me sacked. I know I shouldn’t have read it, but I had a feeling.’

Hiding her impatience, generated by mounting concern, Sarah said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about. Do stay calm.’

‘She’s left the earl, ma’am, and she’s given me a note to tell him so.’

The maid would not read the letter out to her over the phone – Sarah supposed she could understand that, and her sensibility and decorum was appreciated; loyalty and discretion were needed now more than ever – so a journey to ascertain the facts was necessary. Sarah immediately telephoned for a taxi; even waiting for Dickenson to send Lawrence’s chauffeur seemed too slow. She gave no thought to the expense; she simply had to be there.

Sarah had qualms about reading the letter, too. Correspondence between husband and wife ought to be sacrosanct. But then Lydia had detonated the concept that there were things between husband and wife that ought to be revered. The envelope was a thick, creamy parchment; the feminine penmanship was neat and tidy. Sarah slid open the envelope. The words were careful, concerned. Lydia had retained enough humility to resist resorting to clichés or trying to explain how she felt about Edgar. She’d constrained herself, stuck to the bald facts. The determined and sparse note was perhaps all the more horrifying for it. She was pregnant with another man’s child. The marriage must end. She hoped he could forgive her.

Sarah gasped. Poor Lawrence. How was she to deliver this note? She would not. It should not exist. In temper and panic she ripped the letter in half, then in quarters. Like a child she wanted the evidence out of the way, as though that somehow might obliterate the facts too. She thought of Molly hiding toffee wrappers in her pillowcase. She strode to the chimneypiece, but it was too hot for a fire. She looked about and found a heavy onyx cigarette lighter. She set alight the offending letter and envelope. She held it over the grate and watched the expensive creamy paper turn black and curl, then flake away to nothing. The heat of the secret scorched her fingertips and her hands were left sooty. She was just rubbing them together when Lawrence walked into the drawing room.

‘Sarah, how wonderful to see you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Are you cold?’ He clearly thought she’d been attempting to light a fire. Naturally he looked surprised; it was still seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit outside, even though it was nearly seven in the evening.

‘Not at all.’ She didn’t offer an explanation as to why she was poking around in the embers. She thought that in situations like these it was best not to elaborate.

‘Did you come here hoping to find Lydia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dickenson tells me she’s gone to London.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not absolutely sure when she’s expected back.’ He looked apologetic.

‘No.’ Sarah didn’t know what to say. She’d burned the letter, but that wouldn’t be enough; it wouldn’t get Lydia to return. She needed to speak to Ava, who would know what to do; she’d bring Lydia back, because back she must come. Sarah suddenly felt nauseous. She didn’t like secrets. It had been enough having to live with the knowledge that Lydia was having an affair all these months, but this latest development had an urgency and desperation that Sarah couldn’t contain. This would blow up in their faces.

Her eyes skimmed the room. She was looking for a way in to some small talk, but she found she couldn’t motivate her tongue because her mind was busy trying to conquer her internal disbelief. It was all as she’d expected. She knew the antique tapestries that hung on the walls, the books that lined countless shelves; she was familiar with the embroidered cushions and spreads, the panelled walls and grandfather clock. She glanced at Lawrence. Why would Lydia leave all of this?

Lawrence was looking at the carpet. His hair was receding and the skin on his skull was a little pink; he’d been outside inspecting the fences most of the day. She thought he ought to always wear a hat. Suddenly she had an urge to caress the bald patch. Silly of her. The evening sunshine slid in through the window, past the nets, and splashed across the Asian rugs. The air was still, calm.

‘Would you like to stay for supper, since you’ve come all this way?’ He didn’t look hopeful.

Sarah nodded eagerly and Lawrence beamed, relieved. ‘Gosh, that’s marvellous.’

‘I haven’t brought an appropriate dress.’

‘You look fine. Quite lovely.’

Sarah didn’t understand it. Here she was in the middle of a distinctly horrible situation. A crisis. And yet. A small bubble of delight had popped in her stomach.

He thought she looked fine, quite lovely.

A
CHURCH BELL
struck eleven just as Lydia disembarked from the train at Clarendale. She looked around the lonely station and wondered how she’d got there. The air was still, almost steamy; the warmth of the day rose from the concrete.

‘Are you all right, miss?’ The stationmaster called down the platform, his voice crackling through the blue-black air, disturbing a bird in the hedgerow; it was obvious he didn’t really want to rouse himself from his room.

‘Quite, thank you,’ she called, and then kept her head down. She didn’t want to be recognised; if he realised that she was the Countess of Clarendale he would probably want to telephone the house and have the chauffeur pick her up; at the very least he’d insist on telephoning for a cab. Lydia wanted to walk the three miles. Or to be accurate, it was the least offensive option out of the scant choices available to her. She certainly didn’t want to pass pleasantries with a driver and she shrivelled from the idea of having her return announced at the house. She put one foot in front of another.

It made sense to walk. It was a warm night, the streets were safe, her bag wasn’t too heavy; her heart was breaking. With each step she told herself she was not returning to Lawrence, about that she was adamant. It perhaps might seem that way to an onlooker, but in fact she was checking whether Edgar was waiting for her at the house. There had been some mix-up. Had to have been. He’d be there. She was sure of it. There was a possibility that Dickenson had made a mistake when she’d sent the telegram. Instead of writing,
I’ll meet you at yours
, she might have wired,
I’ll meet you at mine.
Lydia would not allow herself to consider that they had never, ever made such an arrangement and if Edgar had received such a telegram he would have wired asking for clarity. Instead she told herself that the unfeasible, unlikely explanation was the answer. She was not returning to Lawrence. She was just walking. One step, and then the next.

She walked alongside the dense, overgrown hedgerows, next to dapples of daisies and clumps of cowslip closed up tight against the night. She did not notice when long nettles reached out and whipped her ankles; she just tried not to slip into the roadside ditches. Her feet were blistered, the result of being squeezed into narrow heels all day and tramping aimlessly, pointlessly around the dusty London streets; her hand was sore where she’d sweatily clasped her suitcase, and her back ached. It was an indescribable throb that she couldn’t accurately attribute to anything other than her depressed state.

She had not known what to do with herself when she left his lodgings. She’d thought perhaps he might be waiting in one of their usual meeting places, the V&A or the Savoy. She’d visited both and made enquiries at several more bars, but she had not found him.

Now, she trudged through the village, dodging the tipsy men who had been kicked out of the pub and were stumbling about the streets; one moment all jovial and good-natured, the next at each other’s throats. They were all about the age that suggested they would have been sent to war. What were their experiences? she wondered. What had made them so wildly inconsistent?

She had sat in the landlady’s front parlour for an hour and a half. Then the heat had begun to overpower her, and her eyelids – ton weights – had fallen shut; she had jerked awake with the motion of her head tumbling forward on to her chest. The desire to lie down was tremendous. It was the pregnancy. Since the baby’s conception she had been floored with vast waves of the most profound fatigue; she couldn’t fight it. She thought of Edgar’s cool bed, upstairs in the attic room. She wanted to lie on the sheets that rarely smelt clean but always smelt of them, and inhale his scent; wait for him there. It was ridiculous that she, his lover, the mother-to-be of his child, was being pinned to a chair in a fusty lower-middle-class parlour. No longer prepared to accept it, she had wandered into the corridor, the one where just a couple of weeks ago she had made love to Edgar against the wall.

‘I’m going to wait for the sergeant major in his rooms,’ she called. She made her intention an unequivocal declaration rather than a request, deciding that asking permission was beneath her and, besides, unlikely to offer up the result she needed.

‘He hasn’t got any rooms.’ The landlady emerged from the gloom of the shadowy kitchen. Waddling, so as to keep her sweaty thighs from rubbing against one another.

‘I’ll wait upstairs.’ Lydia already had her foot on the third stair; she was holding the banister. The air was too hot and close for this wordplay. He didn’t have rooms as such. He had one room. Did the old witch of a landlady want her to say ‘bedroom’? Was that the point she was making? Would she gain some vicarious erotic charge by hearing Lydia admit as much? She was clearly enjoying Lydia’s discomfort.

‘He’s cleared off.’

Lydia had paused, mid step, her foot waving helplessly and awkwardly in the air, missing the tread. She didn’t know whether to place it on the next step up, or the next step down.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’ She heard the quiver in her own voice and hated herself for it. Her tone suggested she understood all too well.