The Summer Before the War (40 page)

It was a long
three days before Agatha Kent made a loud and public arrival at the cottage at teatime, bearing an assortment of foods for the invalid and a gift for Mrs. Turber.

“It is so hard to have influenza in the house, Mrs. Turber,” she said, on the doorstep, where the neighbors might hear her. She presented the landlady with a large, beribboned box of dainty marzipan confections. “My husband sent these especially for you from London.” Mrs. Turber could only open her mouth silently, like a carp, for surely in accepting the box, she must in all politeness swallow the grand lie with which it was offered.

“Dr. Lawton says she is doing much better,” said Beatrice as Agatha swept in at the door. “She usually sleeps in the afternoon, but I can go and wake her?”

“Lady Emily says they all miss Celeste's piano playing at the hospital, but of course she is to concentrate on getting better,” said Agatha, still pursuing Mrs. Turber's complete domination. “Don't disturb the patient on my account,” she added. “I just need a word with Miss Nash on one or two matters.”

Shutting the parlor door on Mrs. Turber, Agatha moved to the window and stood, slowly stripping off her driving gloves. Her broad driving hat, with its thick veil, was cast aside on the window seat. She seemed gloomy.

“I began to doubt you would come,” said Beatrice. “I'm sorry, but so many ladies would wash their hands of the matter, and then I didn't hear from you…”

“I hope I never pretended to be somehow above the other ladies of this town,” said Agatha. “That would be the height of hubris on my part.” She settled on the window seat and tossed the gloves aside onto the hat. “I fear I am as small-minded as the next woman. The trick is to know it,” she added.

“I am also shocked,” Beatrice admitted slowly. For the last few days she had found it hard to stay in the cottage with Celeste. The long hours in her room scribbling, with little faith and fewer ideas; her desire to breakfast and be off to school so early that the groundskeeper had to let her in at the side door—excuses so that she would not have to smell Celeste's fresh-soaped skin, or look at her body blooming under her dressing gown, or watch her face lit by the dying embers of the fire and witness the loneliness of her melancholy. She had shrunk from Celeste as if her misfortune was sin burned on her flesh. Agatha was silent and picked at a loose thread on her gloves. “But in my heart I know it is my duty as a woman to fight my own weakness and stand against injustice,” added Beatrice.

“Women will always bear the shame of Eve, it seems,” said Agatha. “It was the same in my youth, and I fear it will be the same long after we are gone.” She stared out of the window for a long moment as if seeing down the years. “War only makes it worse,” she added. “A soldier dies, and a girl who considered herself promised is left with shattered dreams and a child. This time, the Vicar tells me, he is twisting every rule to get young couples married off in the space between orders and embarkation.”

“What are we to do?” asked Beatrice.

“I have just come from Amberleigh de Witte's house,” said Agatha. “I went to her to seek sanctuary for our poor refugee. A few months of rest after her ‘influenza' and the child placed with an accommodating farmer's wife—sometimes such arrangements are made locally.”

“I knew you had not forsaken us,” said Beatrice. “Miss de Witte is the perfect solution. She does not go about in society, and Celeste already knows her cottage. Why did I not think of her?”

“It does us no good,” said Agatha. “Amberleigh declines to help.”

“But why?” asked Beatrice. “Surely she knows what it is to be shunned?”

“Exactly,” said Agatha. “Miss de Witte told me quite cogently what I could do with my request for her help. As she pointed out, with several mortifying examples, I have made no effort to open my doors to her.”

“You have not?” asked Beatrice.

“Miss Nash, I hope I am a sensible woman, but I am not a revolutionary,” she said. “Their marriage cannot stand scrutiny, and Miss de Witte must bear the stigma of it. I may not invite her to tea.”

“I thought they preferred their solitude,” said Beatrice. “They have each other.”

“Few marriages can survive such solitude,” said Agatha. “The woman will pine for company and she will surely push her husband from her arms by a surfeit of domestic attention.”

“They have their work, their writing,” said Beatrice. “Surely it sustains them?”

“Have you met many writers, Miss Nash?” asked Agatha. “I find them to be the greediest for social attention. I fear Mr. Tillingham may never publish again, given that he is always gallivanting and so rarely confined to his desk.”

“Will you decline to ask Celeste to tea?” asked Beatrice, hearing Abigail's footsteps and the rattle of the tea tray in the hall. Agatha did not reply immediately but waited in silence for Abigail to place the large tray and set out the cups.

“Thank you, Abigail. That will be all,” Beatrice said. “I can pour for us.” When the maid was gone, she waited for an answer.

“You cannot know how much compassion I feel for Celeste,” said Agatha. “But while I might continue to ask her to tea as a charitable act, I would not ask her if other guests were expected, and I could never invite her to dinner.” Beatrice's hand shook as she poured the tea, and some of the Earl Grey slopped into the saucer. “I tell you a truth so unflattering to me because we should understand our limits, my dear.”

“What should we do?” asked Beatrice.

“I have also written to my late sister's midwife in Gloucestershire,” said Agatha. “She was always a woman of great discretion. But if all fails, we must look to preserve your reputation.”

“I don't care about me,” said Beatrice.

“It is also unflattering not to be truthful,” said Agatha. “We are all social creatures, my dear. I do not think you wish to lose your home or your position, do you?”

Beatrice shook her head. “But I had thought you more progressive, Mrs. Kent,” she said stiffly. “Celeste is after all an innocent in the matter.”

“You think me unenlightened, but now it is you who are being blind,” said Agatha, interrupting. “There is a reason they call it a fate worse than death. Should such rumor spread, then even if there were no child, I fear no man would consider her for a wife or even a mistress, and no women would receive her.” She drank her tea and gathered her gloves. “I believe this particular taint will endure long after your suffragettes have achieved every dream of emancipation, my dear.”

“It is horrible,” said Beatrice, but she flushed at the truth of Agatha's words.

“You must be wary of contagion,” said Agatha. “Sometime soon Celeste's condition will become obvious, and then she cannot stay here with you.”

“I fear Celeste is exhausted with despair,” said Beatrice. “We must take pity on her.”

“Bettina Fothergill will smell pity a mile away and will take delight in burying all of us,” said Agatha. “Please, understand that cultivating a convincing level of disinterest is the only way to help.”

Beatrice did her best to carry on as usual, but some rumor, perhaps whispered first by Mrs. Turber, exerted an influence as slow and subtle as a change in the barometer before an oncoming bank of rain clouds. Mrs. Turber's friends continued to come for tea. But where they once came to catch an eager glimpse of beauty, they now seemed more inclined to stare, chewing sandwiches in silence and whispering to Mrs. Turber in the passage afterwards. The Belgians in the garden studio seemed to amuse their own children a little more, leaving Celeste to her silent embroidery; while her father borrowed thicker and thicker books from Mr. Tillingham's library and read by himself in the window.

At school Miss Devon and Miss Clauvert were noticeably cool towards Beatrice. Whenever she came to take her regular cup of tea in the staff room, they seemed to pull their chairs closer together in a corner and turn their shoulders against her. But Beatrice put this down to Miss Clauvert's recent discovery of Beatrice writing a letter to Mr. Dimbly before lessons began. As she was informed by a severe Miss Devon, after the weeping Miss Clauvert had to go home with a headache, Mr. Dimbly had asked Miss Clauvert to write to him and this had been taken as a promise of some kind, against which Beatrice's letter had the appearance of flagrant interloping. Beatrice had little use for such silliness and was glad to be left alone to her morning tea.

Even Eleanor Wheaton had ceased to drop by unannounced or send invitations, but the absence of Eleanor's cheerful excess and generosity, while it contributed to the air of melancholy in the small cottage, did not raise an alarm. Beatrice's failure to notice was perhaps willfully blind.

It was the ladies of the Relief Committee who finally gave shape and sound to the intensity of excited feeling collected under the huddled roofs of Rye. At an emergency lunchtime meeting, Mrs. Fothergill suggested that Beatrice be excused from the discussions.

“I'm sorry,” said Beatrice. “What is to be discussed to which I am not allowed to be privy?”

“A delicate matter, my dear,” said Lady Emily. “We think only of your sensibilities and of your position.”

“I have made it clear that I think this is not the place to discuss such a matter at all,” said Agatha Kent, feigning to be distracted with searching for a handkerchief in one of her pockets.

“And you may make such a note in the minutes, dear Agatha,” said Mrs. Fothergill. “But it is my opinion that we have a responsibility to those who donate to the cause and a moral obligation to supervise our guests.”

“I assure you I am not the most sensitive woman in this room,” said Beatrice. “You need have no fear of shocking me.”

“As a guardian of young minds, you should perhaps be more protective of your reputation,” said Mrs. Fothergill.

“I think this concerns her directly,” said Agatha, ceasing to fiddle about her person and looking Bettina Fothergill in the eye. “If you are bent on bringing the matter forward, Bettina, let the girl know what she is facing.” Beatrice detected a strain under her neutral tone, and her heart constricted.

“I have no objection to her staying,” said Lady Emily. “We may need her cooperation.”

“I would like to remind everyone that what we discuss here is to be kept strictly confidential,” said Agatha, glaring at Bettina Fothergill. “Let's for goodness' sake get it over with before Mr. Tillingham comes in.”

Mrs. Fothergill, given the floor, seemed suddenly hard-pressed to begin. She gave several little coughs and worked her lips as if practicing different opening phrases.

“It is completely regrettable, of course, that the girl has suffered an outrage,” she said. “Mrs. Turber is the most Christian and charitable of ladies, and she is in tears at the impossible nature of the situation.”

“Mrs. Turber has an unfortunate taste for gossip and all the compassion of a coal scuttle,” said Agatha Kent. “I find it hard to imagine her weeping.”

“It is hardly gossip, dear Agatha,” said Mrs. Fothergill. “Mrs. Turber assures me she would have confirmed nothing had that de Witte woman not already mentioned it to me.”

“What are they talking about?” Beatrice asked Agatha, though she knew at once and she held her breath in shame at the bald way they proposed to dissect and examine Celeste's private pain as if it were just another problem with subscription tallies or the price of soap for the hostel in the lower road.

Agatha looked at her own shoes and grew flushed about the neck, all attempt at disinterest in tatters. Beatrice had never before seen her at a loss for words.

“It has become common knowledge that your boarder has suffered an unmentionable indignity,” said Alice Finch, to some audible gasps around the table. “Well, ladies, if we are going to discuss it, we should be plain about it,” she added.