The American Boy (32 page)

“Thank you, no. I never touch cards.”

“No. Well – just as you please, sir. I had hoped to match you with Lady Ruispidge –”

“You must not concern yourself, Papa,” Miss Carswall said. “Lady Ruispidge was telling me that she never plays with any other partner but Mrs Johnson if she can help it. They have a system, I fancy.”

In a few moments, the card players had been allocated to their tables: at one, Miss Carswall and Sir George would play against Lady Ruispidge and Mrs Johnson; at the other, Captain Ruispidge and Mrs Frant would play against Mr Carswall and Mrs Lee.

“I am vexed Papa did not consult you,” Miss Carswall said quietly. “You may take my place, if you wish.”

“Not for the world.”

At that moment, Sir George came to hover over her with a fine proprietary air, ready to lead her to the card table. Mr Noak took up a book. I put a newspaper on my knee to give myself the appearance of occupation and wondered whether I should withdraw. A few minutes later, the room was almost entirely silent, apart from the crackle of the logs on the fire and the chink of china. I brooded on Captain Ruispidge's advice and wondered which lady's reputation was at risk from my undue familiarity.

By and by, Mr Noak looked up from his page, his finger marking his place, and stared into the fire. The room was well lit and it seemed to me that his eyes gleamed unusually brightly in the candlelight. I offered to help him to some more coffee. At first he did not hear me. Then he started and turned towards me.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I was a thousand miles away. No – further than that.”

“May I fetch you another cup of coffee, sir?”

He thanked me and gave me his cup. He watched me as I refilled it.

“You must forgive me if I am a little melancholy this evening,” he said, when I handed him his coffee. “Today was my son's birthday.” He studied my face. “You have a look of him, if I may say so. I remarked the resemblance as soon as I saw you.”

He fell silent, and to fill the emptiness I ventured to suggest that it must be a consolation to know his son had died a soldier's death.

“Not even that, Mr Shield, not even that.” He shook his head slowly from side to side, as though trying to shake the pain out of it. “I regret to say that we had been estranged for many years. He adopted the principles of his mother's family, in politics and in all else. Frank was a fine boy, but he had a sad tendency towards obstinacy.” He shrugged thin shoulders, too small for the coat. “I do not know why I bore you with my affairs. Pray excuse me.”

“There is nothing to excuse, sir.” I thought it probable that the wine Mr Noak had taken at dinner had depressed his spirits while lessening his habitual reserve.

“I could have borne a soldier's death, even in the service of King George,” Mr Noak went on, his voice scarcely louder than a whisper. “Or even if disease had snatched him away in the prime of his life. But not this: face-down in a Kingston gutter: they said he drowned when he was drunk.” He turned his head sharply and looked at me with eyes glistening with tears. “That was hard to bear, Mr Shield, that was hard. To know that the world thought my son a drunken sot who died needlessly because of his intoxication. Bad enough, you would think. Aye, but there was worse to come, much worse.” He seemed suddenly to recollect himself and broke off. “But I must not weary you with the recital of my son's woes.”

He gave me a stiff smile and returned to his book. The tips of his ears were rosy-pink. I sipped the rest of my coffee. I had no doubt that Mr Noak's grief was genuine but I was not convinced that his frankness was as artless as it seemed.

The card players were wrapped in the wordless communion of their kind. Captain Ruispidge put down a card and drew the trick he had won towards him. He stared across the table at Mrs Frant, his partner. She looked up and smiled her acknowledgement. Despair moved within me. How intimate a connection is a partnership at cards, how private the solitude it creates. I drank my coffee to the bitter, gritty dregs and forced my mind to consider a less painful matter.

What, I wondered, had Noak meant? What could be worse for a father than the knowledge that his son had died estranged from his parent and as a result of a drunken accident of his own making? The discovery that his son had been culpably involved in a criminal undertaking?

Frank was a fine boy, but he had a sad tendency towards obstinacy.

As an epitaph it suggested Lieutenant Saunders had inherited at least one quality from his father. But it did not suggest there had been anything criminal or sinful about him. So in that case, what was worse than your son –
a fine boy
– dying as a result of a self-induced drunken accident?

Why, it could only mean that he had died for some other reason. Not disease, it appeared. So he must have been killed. But if killed lawfully, he would not have been reported as having died in an accident. So had Mr Noak's son therefore been killed unlawfully?

In other words, had Lieutenant Frank Saunders been murdered?

Sir George most obligingly rode over on Thursday morning with the news that a suite of apartments in a house in Westgate had become available for the night of the assembly. Lord Vauden and his party had taken them for several nights but the sudden illness of a near relation from whom he had expectations had compelled him to withdraw. Sir George had taken the liberty of bespeaking the apartments in Mr Carswall's name, though of course this conferred no obligation upon Mr Carswall, and it would be the work of a moment to cancel the arrangement if it did not suit because Captain Ruispidge was engaged to dine in Gloucester that very evening.

This was just the encouragement Mr Carswall needed. Not only was he flattered by Sir George's kind attention but the suggestion removed the chief practical obstacle to the scheme. Sir George added that his mother was greatly looking forward to renewing her acquaintance with Miss Carswall and Mrs Frant. When we were sitting in the drawing room after dinner, Mr Carswall returned to this condescension on the part of Lady Ruispidge.

“But Papa,” Miss Carswall said, “you know Sophie cannot come to the ball.”

“Of course not. But there is no reason why she should not come to Gloucester with us, is there?” He turned to Mrs Frant who was seated at the tea table. “You will enjoy the shops, I daresay, eh? We have been very cooped up here at Monkshill, and it will do us good to have a change.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Groaning with the effort, he leaned on the table and patted her hand with his great paw. “You cannot mope for ever, my dear. You shall buy something pretty for yourself. And something for the boy, perhaps, too.”

Mrs Frant pulled her hand away and began to gather together the tea things.

“Sir George brought me a note from Mrs Johnson today,” Miss Carswall said brightly. “She enclosed a receipt for eel soup from Lady Ruispidge. So obliging. I wonder how many of us will go to Gloucester, and how many beds are spoken for us. One would not like to be cramped or thrown together with people one does not care for.”

“No,” said Mrs Frant. “I can think of nothing worse.”

The ball at the Bell Inn was on Wednesday, the 12th January. It formed the principal topic of conversation at Monkshill-park in the week before – where our party would lodge, what they should wear, whom they would encounter and whom they would like to encounter. The boys and I were to stay at Monkshill.

On Monday, two days before the ball, I came into the small sitting room to look for my pupils and found Miss Carswall with her nose in a book on the sofa by the fire. I explained my errand.

“Why not let them run wild this afternoon?” She yawned, exposing very white, very sharp teeth. “There is nothing so fatiguing as a printed page, I find.”

“What is it you are reading?”

She held out a cloth-bound duodecimo volume. “
Domestic Cookery, and Useful Receipt Book
,” she said. “It is a treasure house of valuable information. Here it tells you how to make a mutton-ham, which sounds a monstrous contradiction, and probably tastes like one too. And here are two and a half pages devoted solely to the laundry maid and her duties. It is so lowering. I had not realised there was so much useful knowledge in the world. It seems quite boundless, like the Pacific Ocean.”

I said something civil in reply, along the lines of being sure that a student of her ability would soon acquire all the knowledge she needed.

“The study of books does not come easily to me, Mr Shield. You must not think me a blue, far from it. But Papa believes that every woman should know domestic economy.” Her eyelids fluttered. “He bids me model myself in that respect on Lady Ruispidge.” Her hand flew to her left eye. “Oh!”

“What is it, Miss Carswall?”

“I believe I have something in my eye.” Miss Carswall rose unsteadily to her feet, pouting with vexation, and examined her face in the mirror above the fireplace. “I cannot see anything in it but the light is so bad over here. It is
such
an irritation.”

“Shall I ring the bell?”

“They will take an age to come, and then they will have to find my maid. No, Mr Shield, would you be very kind and come with me over to the window and see if you can see it? Whatever it might be. It is unlikely to be a fly at this time of year. Perhaps a speck of soot or a hair. Even an errant eyelash can have such a profound and disproportionate effect on human happiness.”

I followed her to the window where she turned and held her face up to me. I came close to her and peered into her left eye. When you are near a woman, you smell her scent, not just the perfume she is wearing but the entire olfactory nature of her – a compound of perfume, the odour of her clothes, and the natural animal smell underlying all.

“Pray turn your head a little to the left,” I said. “There – that is better.”

“Can you see anything? In the corner.”

“Which corner?”

She giggled. “I am not thinking clearly. The inner corner.”

I brought my face a little closer so that I could see more clearly and, simultaneously, she raised herself on tiptoe and turned her face an inch or so to the right. Her lips brushed mine.

I gave a startled yelp and jumped back.

“I'm so sorry, Mr Shield,” she said with complete composure.

“I – I beg your pardon,” I muttered wildly, my heart beating like a drum.

“Not at all. At first I thought the hair had been dislodged but I think it is still there. I wonder if I might trouble you to have another look.”

She raised her face up to me again and smiled. I brought my mouth down on hers and felt her lips move and for an instant part against mine. Then her hands caught mine and she took a step back.

“Come away from the window,” she murmured, and like figures in a dance we moved a few paces together, as one creature, and then began to kiss again. She rested her hands on my shoulders and I ran my palms over her hips. Her warmth enveloped me like a flame.

Thirty seconds? A minute at most. There was a clatter on the other side of the door. We sprang apart. In an instant, I was contemplating the view across the terrace to the river far below, while Miss Carswall was seated on the sofa, turning the pages of
Domestic Cookery
with an expression of rapt concentration on her face. A plump maid with a damp red face carried a scuttle of coals into the room. She made up the fire and tidied the grate. While she was still rattling the fire irons, the boys rushed in.

“Mr Harmwell is going to show us how to trap rabbits,” Charlie said proudly. “Ain't it famous? If we was shipwrecked, you know, like Robinson Crusoe, we could dine like kings on rabbits.”

“How very kind of Mr Harmwell,” Miss Carswall said.

“He is a very kind man,” Charlie said simply. “Edgar says he is quite different from the niggers they have at home.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Most of the ones we have in Richmond are slaves, sir,” the American boy said. “But Mr Harmwell is as free as you or I.”

The maid curtsied and left the room. The boys followed, banging the door behind them.

“And how free is that?” I said.

Miss Carswall giggled. “Free enough in all conscience. I approve of freedom. I am a natural radical.” She rose and came to stand beside me. She glanced out of the window, and the excitement left her face. “Look. Sophie's coming.”

We moved apart and re-arranged our limbs and our feelings. Mrs Frant passed the window as she made her way along the terrace towards the side door.

I coughed. “Do I understand from Harmwell's continued presence that Mr Noak stays for a while longer?”

“Yes, had you not heard? At least until after the ball.” Miss Carswall laughed; she appeared wholly self-possessed. “I had the reason from Sophie who had it from Mrs Kerridge, who had it from Harmwell himself. You recall that Kerridge and Harmwell are sweet on one another? It is touching, is it not, and especially at their time of life? Anyway, according to Harmwell, Mr Noak is contemplating the purchase of some property from my father. A warehouse in Liverpool, or some such thing. And there is talk of other investments – you know what gentlemen are like when they begin to talk of their investments. They become like girls talking of their beaux – there is the same blend of fantasy with obsession, the desire for secrecy, the lust for acquisition.”

She had moved away from me now, and sat down again on the sofa. I felt half relieved, half cheated. A moment later, Mrs Frant came into the room and held out her hands to the fire.

“Mrs Johnson is still at Clearland-court, I collect?” she said to Miss Carswall.

“I believe so. I had understood from Sir George that she was staying with them until after the ball. Why?”

“I was walking near the ruins and I saw a man in the garden of Grange Cottage.”