The Summer Before the War (7 page)

“Of course, it is long forgotten,” said Lady Emily. “Though I was sorry to give that one away.”

“You gave him away?” said Daniel. “The ratter king?”

“Heartbreaking, but I could no longer feel quite comfortable looking at his little teeth nibbling bacon from my breakfast plate,” she said. “One has to be so careful about disease.”

“Quite understandable,” said Daniel. While he struggled to hide his amusement, Beatrice noticed that his cousin Hugh looked pained.

“Colonel Wheaton likes to complain that we employ half a footman just to brush away the hair,” said Lady Emily. “But then I find him in his study, reading the newspaper, with a dog under each arm. It takes days to get the smell of his cigar out of their coats.”

“I often think I should get some sort of little dog,” said Mr. Tillingham. “An aggressive terrier, perhaps, to keep away all the unwanted visitors who interrupt my work.”

“I can't abide people who dislike dogs,” said Lady Emily. “I am especially suspicious of those who prefer cats.” She peered as if Beatrice might be guilty. “There is something too malleable about them, don't you think?”

“I believe our Mayoress, Mrs. Fothergill, has two rather elegant long-haired Siamese,” said Daniel.

“A very pushing sort of woman,” said Lady Emily. “However, I will hold my tongue tomorrow in order to secure Miss Nash's position.”

“Not that your position in the school is not secure,” added Agatha. “But Lady Emily hosts an annual tea, with the school governors, the Headmaster and staff, and some of our other dignitaries. We thought it would be a lovely Sunday afternoon introduction to ensure your welcome to the community.”

“Of course, we did not expect you to be so young,” said Lady Emily. Beatrice felt a flush spread across her neck and cheeks as the question of her age, which would not, of course, be asked, hung in the air.

“I am twenty-three,” she said, looking directly at Lady Emily. “I hope I am therefore sufficiently advanced into spinsterhood?”

“I am sure there is no question that you are,” said Agatha.

“Positively ancient,” said Daniel. “Don't you agree, Hugh?”

“That isn't what I meant at all,” said Agatha.

“A more wrinkled physiognomy and gray hair might have been expected,” said Hugh. “But I'm sure a few weeks of our local grammar pupils will achieve the desired appearance.”

“I believe the real problem is that Lady Emily and Mrs. Kent present such figures of youth that anyone your age must appear a mere slip of a girl,” said Mr. Tillingham.

“You are being absurd, dear friend,” said Lady Emily, but she looked a little pinker in the face.

“He is being a writer,” said Daniel. “All writers must tell truth to beauty.”

“Obviously poets are compelled to produce excesses of hyperbole,” said Hugh. “I imagine writers merely exaggerate?”

Daniel laughed, and Beatrice saw Mr. Tillingham's face flicker with annoyance before he too relaxed into a chuckle.

“And thus, with a blunt saw, we are crudely and cruelly dissected by the medical man,” said Mr. Tillingham.

“Well, regardless of age, I am sure Miss Nash will present herself as a modest, dignified woman and show that we have made the right decision,” said Agatha.

“I shall be sure to wear my ugliest dress,” said Beatrice.

“Plain will do,” said Lady Emily, in a severe tone. “We just don't need another spectacle like our French mistress and her preposterous silk dresses.”

“To be fair, Miss Clauvert is not an Englishwoman,” said Agatha. “It is our good fortune to have a real Frenchwoman.”

“True,” said Lady Emily. “But I'm thankful Miss Nash's family is of impeccable English lineage.”

“Actually, my mother was American,” said Beatrice, before she could stop herself. She clamped her lips closed in order to resist adding that her father had been disowned by the Marbelys and had disowned them in return for as long as possible.

“An American?” said Lady Emily, in a tone of horrified surprise.

“How delightful,” said Daniel. “Lady Emily is a great admirer of all things American, is she not, Mr. Tillingham?”

“Of course,” said Tillingham. He did not look terribly happy at being reminded of his own citizenship. Beatrice now recognized that his careful articulation bore deliberately little trace of any accent.

“My father is English,” she said. “Though after my mother died, he could never seem to be happy here.”

“Ah, the mysteries of the human heart,” said Mr. Tillingham. He raised a hand into the air, as if about to conduct an unseen orchestra, and everyone paused, as probably he intended, thought Beatrice, in order to await a bon mot from the great mind. “For I long ago found a home and a safe harbor in this tiny corner of England and I can never seem to be happy anywhere else.”

“And we consider you quite one of us, Mr. Tillingham,” said Lady Emily. “I assure you I no longer even think of you as American.”

“Mr. Tillingham is in great demand among the local hostesses,” said Agatha to Beatrice. “He is quite pestered with invitations.”

“I must be ruthless in declining or I would never dine by my own comfortable fireside,” said Mr. Tillingham. “The public acknowledgment of one's literary contributions is of course gratifying, but the burden of reputation can be heavy at times.”

“Good thing you don't have to suffer under such a burden with your poetry, Daniel,” said Hugh. “I shall pray for you to remain unpublished.”

“I have broad shoulders,” said Daniel. “Bring on the fame and the laurels.”

“You may joke, boys,” said Mr. Tillingham. “But wait until yet another local squire leans across the dinner table to ask you loudly whether he might have read anything you've written.”

“I know something of what you mean,” said Beatrice. “My father was often asked to explain who he was and what kind of things he wrote. He was always patient.” There was a polite pause, and Beatrice froze, realizing with horror that they thought she was referring to Mr. Tillingham's earlier failure to recollect her father's name.

“I, alas, am not as patient perhaps as your father,” said Mr. Tillingham and gave her a smile that eliminated any tension. Beatrice could have kissed him for his unexpected graciousness. “I like to respond that I do not write for the
Farmers' Almanac
and so cannot dare to hope that the gentleman has read any of my meager oeuvre.”

“It is far more polite to admit that one doesn't read,” said Lady Emily. “Who has the time? Of course we have all of Mr. Tillingham's works in our library. I always give your latest volume pride of place next to my drawing room chair, Mr. Tillingham. I have a special gold bookmark with a Fortuny silk tassel.”

“I am touched,” said Mr. Tillingham.

“If Mr. Tillingham prefers to dine in his own home, we should make an effort to invite him less often, Aunt,” said Hugh. “It would be terrible to think that we distracted him.” He smiled, but Beatrice detected that Hugh was not altogether joking. She wondered why he didn't like the great man.

“I trust Mr. Tillingham knows he is at liberty to come to dinner anytime and to decline dinner whenever he feels like it,” said Agatha. “We do not stand on ceremony with those we consider family.” She turned to Beatrice and added, “Mr. Tillingham is always writing to me to enquire about the boys and has taken a kind interest in Daniel's poetry.”

“To help along the next generation of young writers and poets is a duty I consider both sacred and rewarding,” said Mr. Tillingham. “I'm hoping, Daniel, that you will come to dinner and bring me some more poems to read?” He raised a thick eyebrow and gave Daniel a conspiratorial smile.

“I'm afraid they're hardly in a fit state,” said Daniel, maintaining a languid air of indifference. “But I'm trying to wrestle some life into one or two pieces.”

“I believe Miss Nash also writes,” said Hugh.

“Oh no,” said Beatrice, flustered by an urgent desire to have the great writer offer a smile of interest towards her and the competing wish to heed Agatha Kent's injunction. “I mean, I have spent the past year editing my father's personal letters in the hopes of publishing a small volume.” She looked at Mr. Tillingham, whose face showed a hint of relief.

“Collecting and sorting such material is an admirable project for a daughter,” he said. “I'm sure it will be of great interest to your father's friends and family; and at least it is a sober endeavor and not some flighty female novel.”

“Perhaps Miss Nash also wishes to write a novel?” asked Hugh.

“Miss Nash will be fully occupied by her vocation as a teacher and will have no interest in such frivolous pursuits,” said Lady Emily. Agatha Kent looked at Beatrice with an eyebrow raised in mute hope.

“My teaching duties will be all my concern,” said Beatrice, bitterly disappointed but resigned to the practical.

“Thank the Lord,” said Mr. Tillingham. “There is a great fashion for encouraging young women, especially American women, to think they can write, and I have received several slightly hysterical requests to read such charming manuscripts.”

“And did you?” asked Daniel.

“Goodness no, I would rather cut off my right hand,” said Mr. Tillingham. “I delegated my secretary to compose her own diplomatic replies and to consign the offending pages to the kitchen stove.”

“I thought you were great friends with that American woman who insists on writing even though her position and fortune make it quite unnecessary,” said Lady Emily.

“The lady of whom you speak is in a category by herself,” said Mr. Tillingham. “She does possess a fastidious eye for the narrow milieu of which she writes, and I cannot fault her competence nor argue with her considerable success.”

“Plus she's very generous, I hear,” said Daniel. “Doesn't she come down and take you out in her enormous motorcar?”

“Daniel!” said his aunt.

Mr. Tillingham waved his hand to indicate his lack of offense. “I assure you, dear boy, that I am quite capable of accepting friends' generosity and still telling them exactly what I think of their art,” said Mr. Tillingham. “Indeed I wish it were otherwise, for I have lost friends and chased away a great love or two in my time with what some of them described as my brutish candor.” To Beatrice's great surprise, he pulled out his large silk pocket square and dabbed at his eyes, which were filling with tears.

“I would never describe you as brutish,” said Daniel. He turned to the room at large and added, “But the last group of poems I showed to Mr. Tillingham was so thoroughly and precisely dismantled that all I had left was a single couplet.”

“It is a curse, but I have never been able to speak anything but the truth when it comes to the written word,” said Mr. Tillingham. “I believe your father felt the same way, my dear.”

“You do remember him?” said Beatrice.

“It is coming to me,” said Mr. Tillingham. “Is it possible that he wrote an absolutely scathing review of my very first play?”

“I believe he did review it,” said Beatrice, blushing.

“Well, he wasn't the only one, to be sure,” said Tillingham. “But I do remember his analysis was astute enough for me to feel unable to write my usual long and detailed rebuttal.”

“Thank you,” said Beatrice.

“I will look for his book as soon as I get home,” added Tillingham. “And you must come to tea and show me one or two of your father's more interesting letters.”

Beatrice felt tears sting the backs of her eyes, and she dug her fingernails into her palms to keep from betraying her gratitude. Mr. Tillingham patted her hand, and Beatrice felt Lady Emily's astonishment.

“Wonderful,” said Agatha. “Remind me to make sure the Headmaster and the Vicar also extend invitations.”

“It is an act of common decency to take turns in relieving the loneliness of the parish's lady spinsters,” said Lady Emily. “Whenever I'm home, I have two elderly sisters in for bridge on Tuesdays. Perhaps you play, Miss Nash?”

Beatrice struggled to find an acceptable evasion, as she was rather proud of her bridge skills.

“On Tuesdays, Miss Nash will be tutoring some of the grammar boys,” said Agatha smoothly. “I had not wanted to impose on you any more, dear Lady Emily, but an invitation to tea from you, issued publicly in the middle of the garden party, would be just the thing to make our little project unassailable and stop Mrs. Fothergill's intrigues.”

“Well, if you think it would help,” said Lady Emily, looking somewhat mollified. “I would willingly endure absolute hardship to put Mrs. Fothergill in her place.”

As the dinner gong rang, Beatrice caught sight of Hugh and Daniel exchanging a smothered grin. She suppressed a smile of her own and thought that she would willingly hear herself compared to a hardship just as long as she did not have to join Lady Emily's parade of spinsters.

The girl who knocked
at Beatrice's bedroom door the next morning did not seem strong enough to carry the heavy tray on which rested a cup of tea in a florid porcelain cup and a heavy jug of hot water for the washstand. She was hollow in the cheeks and narrow-shouldered, her hair pulled back mercilessly into a single braid. Her dress and apron hung loosely, and her boots looked comically large laced onto such scrawny ankles.

“Cup of tea, miss,” she said. “And I'm to tell you breakfast is under a cover below because Mrs. Turber is gone to church at eight and she hopes you won't expect her to set God aside for people who use the Sabbath for sleeping late.”

“Why didn't you wake me?” asked Beatrice.

“I tried, miss, but you didn't want to stir and I took the tea away cold.” She put the tray on the floor, transferred the jug to the washstand, and brought the tea, her lips clamped in concentration to keep the cup from wobbling on its gilded saucer. Even when Beatrice took the tea from her, the girl did not look up but merely turned away to the tray.

“I've never failed to wake up,” said Beatrice, taking a long gulp of hot tea. “I suppose I was tired from traveling.” She was used to the pale dawn hours, the birds' thin choir accompanying her waking thoughts of her father. Curiously, she did not feel guilty for sleeping so late into the hot morning. And if she was tired, from the travel and all the new impressions around her, at least it was a different kind of exhaustion than she had felt all year; more a good physical tiredness and less the enervating lassitude that comes with hopelessness.

“Mr. Puddlecombe never got up before noon on a Sunday,” said the girl. She shuffled her absurd boots, and her cheeks flushed an unflattering red.

“What's your name?” asked Beatrice. The girl gave her a sideways glance and seemed to be gathering her courage to speak.

“I'm so sorry, miss. I'll call out louder next time if you want,” she said. “But if you get up early, Mrs. Turber will make me go to church too, and then it's very hard to get to all the polishing before lunch, and I get Sunday afternoon off but only if I'm all done, and my mum is poorly and needs me and…my name's Abigail.”

“How old are you, Abigail?”

“Thirteen, miss. Or almost, but I'm strong for my age.”

“Well, Abigail, I prefer to go to later services anyway, and I'm not going today at all because I'm to be introduced at a garden party this afternoon and I'm being kept quite hidden from view until then.”

“I can bring your breakfast up if you like,” said Abigail. “It's a hard-boiled egg and toast, some cold bacon and tomatoes.”

“I'd like them packed in a napkin,” said Beatrice. “I think I'll take a ride on my bicycle and eat my breakfast on the beach.” Abigail seemed too surprised to reply, and Beatrice's smile only served to make her look more alarmed. “Run along and pack them up for me,” added Beatrice. “I'll be quite out of your way and you can polish silver all morning.”

“A bicycle, miss,” said Abigail. “That's a grand thing.”

Sunday dinner, served promptly after the noon church service, was the one meal a week to be taken in Mrs. Turber's own dining room.

“I won't be in to tea, Mrs. Turber,” said Beatrice, pushing the gristle from a leathery slice of beef under a piece of cabbage and neatly setting her knife and fork down on the plate. She was sitting wedged between the heavy oak table and a large dark sideboard. The sideboard wore a crocheted doily, as did the backs of the dining chairs, a small curio cabinet, and several plant stands containing fat ferns and bulbous, rubbery plants for which Beatrice had no name. The table was also decked in a crocheted white tablecloth over a green baize square, which in turn protected a heavy red damask cloth that was never removed. The furniture was further protected by festoons of chintz and pleated muslin over the one small window, and the room was as airless as a vacuum. Beatrice sipped her glass of water and prayed for patience as the gilded parlor clock on the mantelpiece made a tocking sound at agonizingly slow intervals.

“Well, it's a good thing I didn't make the Victoria sponge this morning then,” said Mrs. Turber. “That would have been a waste.”

“I think Mrs. Kent told you that I'm required up at Lady Emily's,” said Beatrice.

“I thank the good Lord that I've never been one for putting on airs,” said Mrs. Turber. “Some people about this town— Well, I don't blame Lady Emily for being taken in.” She scowled, pressing her lips together over an undisclosed record of slights and ringing her little crystal bell for Abigail to come in and clear. The girl came in bearing a steaming jam pudding in a basin.

“Is Colonel Wheaton's house very imposing?” asked Beatrice. She thought she might faint from the addition of steam to a room devoid of oxygen. Mrs. Turber got up with some difficulty and went to the sideboard to cut two slabs of pudding.

“I only went once, when the poor Captain was still alive,” she said. “A meeting of the aldermen. Lovely it was, and Lady Emily admired my hat very much.” She sighed. “Of course no one wants to invite a poor widow.”

“I think it's mostly the governors of the school,” said Beatrice.

“Oh yes, it's just the governors or just the aldermen or just the coursing club and their wives,” said Mrs. Turber. “I told Mr. Puddlecombe, it's enough to make one consider marrying, just to make them come up with better excuses.”

Beatrice looked down at the tablecloth and closed her eyes against the image of Mrs. Turber offering such a suggestion to the departed former Latin master.

“I am not looking forward to it,” said Beatrice. “It will be awful to be stared at.”

“Well, to be grateful is to show proper humility,” said Mrs. Turber. “I hope you don't want anything else, only it would be a shame to keep the girl from her afternoon off.”

In the warm afternoon, Beatrice again walked the road out of town, up the hill, to Agatha Kent's house and reflected on how quickly it had become a familiar way, and how comfortable the small town already seemed. It was no doubt some effect of sunshine, and of the breeze, which always held a hint of salty marsh grass. She had told Mrs. Turber she did not relish the coming attention, but now, striding forth, she felt such energy to begin her new life and vocation that she could not wait to join the party. She found Mrs. Kent and her two nephews waiting for her in the cool hallway.

“We will watch for one or two carriages to go by and then stroll over at a leisurely pace to the party,” said Agatha, straightening her hat in the hall mirror. It was quietly new, of an expensive glossy dark straw with a moderate circumference and with a wide navy and white striped grosgrain ribbon finished with a neat rosette to one side. “Lady Emily has charged us to be early, but she cannot expect us to be premature.” She gave a last brush to her suit, which was not, to Beatrice's eye, quite as new but was of thick linen, carefully pressed, and bearing fresh strips of ribbon around the cuffs to match the new hat. It was the kind of suit bought to be used for many years—its skirt let in or out, embellishments stitched on or carefully unpicked as fashions changed—and every autumn laid away in a trunk with a sachet of dried orange peel, lavender, and cloves to keep out the moths. Her own cotton dress felt insubstantial and girlish by comparison.

“A stuffy marquee and sticky lemonade is hardly the way to spend such a glorious afternoon,” said Daniel. “I hope we'll be able to creep away.”

“If you attempt to flee, I will be forced to tell your Uncle John that in his absence you proposed the flipping of a coin to decide who should escort us,” said Agatha, pulling on white lace gloves.

“But, Aunt Agatha, that's what you keep Hugh around for,” said Daniel. “You know he has the better manners.”

“You are such a child,” said Hugh. “You always complain about going and then you, and Harry Wheaton, are always the last to be dragged away from the champagne tent.”

“I assure you, Miss Nash, that Lady Emily's garden party is always quite lovely and is considered one of the highlights of the summer,” said Agatha. “And the garden, while impossibly French, offers wonderful coastal views.”

“I hope, Miss Nash, that my aunt has some time allotted for garden viewing and lemonade,” added Hugh. “Though I fear Lady Emily and she plan to keep you busy with a campaign of introductions.”

“You must each keep one eye on us, boys,” said their aunt. “When I raise a brow you must come and rescue poor Miss Nash.”

“I'm very fond of garden parties,” said Beatrice. “People are usually so pleasant out of doors.” The two young men seemed to find this statement amusing. Even Agatha Kent smiled at her.

“The worthies of Rye are much more pleasant out of doors—chiefly because one has more room to maneuver away from them,” said Daniel. “If I were you, I would keep the gates in view at all times and be prepared to run.”

“Well, now that you have demolished any hope Miss Nash might have had of a pleasant afternoon, shall we be getting along?” asked Hugh. “May I?” He offered Beatrice his arm and they followed Daniel and Agatha out from the cool hall and into the sun-dappled afternoon.

The home of Colonel Wheaton and Lady Emily was not the weathered country seat that Beatrice had expected. Walking through elaborate iron gates, she was presented with an abruptness of red brick: a tall edifice of a house with its edges and principal features all piped, like cake icing, with elaborate white stonework. Two footmen in buttoned jackets and two maids in crisp caps and starched aprons stood sentinel on a smoothly raked gravel forecourt. The forecourt in turn was edged in symmetrical box beds, each clipped to geometric perfection and carpeted with a bright pattern of bedding plants. Severely pollarded lime trees stood in rows along the perimeters of the property.

“What do you think of the Wheaton country cottage?” asked Hugh.

“It is very grand,” said Beatrice, trying to be noncommittal.

“The Colonel has extensive interests in the French brandy business,” said Agatha. “The house is designed in a thoroughly French style.”

“Heaven forbid that the lines of its beauty be softened and blurred under the pressures of English rain or herbaceous fecundity,” said Daniel.

“There's no need to be droll, Daniel,” said his aunt. “Lady Emily is allowed her taste.”

But from the way she smiled, Beatrice thought that Agatha Kent was enjoying an unworthy moment of satisfaction that Lady Emily's money and position did not mean she had superiority of taste.

The Wheatons' garden could not be anything but a felicitous scene: the emerald of the lawn, the tightly pitched white marquee made festive with strings of pale blue pennants, the hats, like the heads of summer flowers, nodding above the ladies' linen and cotton dresses. The uniformed servants, a small navy, ferried trays of sandwiches and buckets of ice across a green sea, and the entire scene was sharply outlined by afternoon sun and teasingly ruffled by a light breeze. Beatrice's heart lifted, and she allowed her jaw to let go its determined clench as she smiled.

Some couples were strolling about the stone-walled perimeter of the lawn, but many of the assembled guests had gathered under the slightly steamy heat of the marquee. It was a human condition, Beatrice had often noticed, to hurry under any roof or protective wall, even when the weather was perfect and no danger threatened.

“There you are. We were about to send a search party,” called Lady Emily, who was waving her sunshade from her spot at the edge of the marquee. “We are all waiting to meet Miss Nash.” With these words, Beatrice felt herself subjected to the bald scrutiny of dozens of faces, all turning in her direction. The buzz of conversation fell a note and then rose in intensity, and she concentrated on trying to keep the fleeting sense of lightness, breathing more slowly, in and out, trying to rise above a small wave of panic that threatened to make her falter. A hand steadied her elbow, and Hugh Grange, frowning, steered her discreetly behind Agatha and Daniel so that they might traverse the swath of grass between terrace and tent in the protective cover of Agatha's broad back and large, plain sunshade.