The Summer Before the War (8 page)

“They are not a bad lot,” said Hugh. “I think you'll like the Headmaster. He always lent me books from his library in the summers. He understands boys very well, and he collects moths.”

“Thank you,” said Beatrice, her throat dry.

“The usual prominent families,” he added. “I'm afraid they can be quite long-winded about the old family history if you give them the slightest opening.”

“Hugh, we should have a bet as to who manages to communicate the most dazzling ancient connections to Miss Nash,” said Daniel, over his shoulder.

“Daniel, do behave,” said Agatha Kent, moving forward and attempting to embrace Lady Emily without disturbing either of their hats. “So lovely of you to invite us, dear Emily.”

“Bettina Fothergill is up to something,” said Lady Emily in her abrupt way. “I don't know what it is yet, but she's cooing like a dove.” She glared across the marquee, and Beatrice tried to follow her glance as unobtrusively as possible.

It was not hard to spot the portly figure of the town's Mayor, who had chosen to wear his chain of office with garden party flannels. Beatrice assumed the thin woman on his arm must be the much-discussed Mrs. Fothergill. She was dressed in a narrow mustard linen suit and was using her free hand to steady an enormous green straw hat covered in red velvet cherries. When she caught sight of Lady Emily and Agatha Kent staring, she let go of the hat momentarily to offer a smile and a wave that was more a wriggle of the fingers.

“Good heavens, she came as a tree,” said Agatha, waving back.

“Oh, I think she was going for the whole orchard,” said Daniel.

“She brought some nephew or nephew of a cousin with her,” said Lady Emily. They all contemplated the young man in a tight striped blazer who was leaning in to listen to the Mayor speak, an action which seemed unnecessary given the prominent size of the young man's ears. “Some sort of law clerk, I didn't really pay attention.”

“That is much the best policy,” said Agatha. “Let's ignore her as long as possible. I really want to introduce Miss Nash to one or two people.”

“Well, here comes our dear Headmaster,” said Lady Emily. “He is in a hurry to make sure you are just as ordered.” A kind-faced man in crumpled beige linen was carving a determined path between the guests.

“Or maybe he's just after that book with the color plates that you failed to return to him last summer,” said Daniel, digging Hugh in the ribs.

“Good heavens, you're right,” said Hugh. “I entirely forgot.”

“If you ladies will excuse us,” said Daniel. “I had better take my cousin out of harm's way and leave you to your introductions.”

“Headmaster, how delightful to see you in holiday dress,” said Agatha. The Headmaster wore a slightly crushed straw fedora and a cravat tucked into his shirt. He looked, thought Beatrice, exactly like a headmaster on a summer tour of Europe's antiquities. He shifted his shoulders as if feeling the phantom weight of missing academic robes. “May I introduce Miss Nash?”

“Wonderful of Lady Emily to have arranged for us all to meet in such relaxed circumstances, Miss Nash,” he said, shaking Beatrice's hand. “One is more at ease outside one's formal setting.”

“I am grateful to you for giving me this opportunity,” said Beatrice. “I hope to justify your faith in me.”

“Have you met our staff?” asked the Headmaster. He waved a hand towards a small group hovering on the edge of the crowd. A young woman with a lace sunshade and a ruffled silk dress of pink and green panels was chatting to a woman of more indeterminate age, who wore a dark, narrow hat and had added a stiff white collar and cuffs to a dark blouse. An older man in a dusty black jacket was holding forth to a hearty man with a large moustache and striped flannels, strained at the shoulders from a muscular build. “Mr. Dobbins, our most senior master, is mathematics,” said the Headmaster, pointing. “Mr. Dimbly is gymnastics and science, Miss Clauvert is French, and Miss Devon is English, history, and sewing.”

“I am eager to meet them and to visit the school,” said Beatrice.

“Well, we must arrange something,” said the Headmaster, but he made no move to lead her over to make introductions, and Beatrice found she was not at all in a hurry to join her ill-at-ease colleagues. “Of course, right now we are in the process of our annual fumigation,” he added.

“What a fine excuse for any circumstance,” said Agatha. “Headmaster, you are quite the wit this afternoon.”

Under the tent, Beatrice felt a headache tightening its iron band around her brow. She had been introduced to so many people that they had all blurred together. She was asking a servant about the relative merits of the lemonade and the fruit punch, hoping for a brief moment in which no one would ask her another penetrating question about her family or her qualifications.

“I recommend the lemonade,” said a voice, and she turned to find Hugh Grange at her elbow. “You must be tired of introductions?” he added.

“Everyone has been very kind,” she said. “But it is a lot of people to remember.”

“How did you find the Headmaster?” asked Hugh.

“We talked about exterminating vermin,” said Beatrice. “He assured me that they fumigate the school after every term to keep the infestations to an acceptable minimum.”

“I expect that was of great comfort,” said Hugh.

“Not really,” said Beatrice. “He said Miss Devon would show me how to sew little bags of sulfur into my hems to deter lice.”

“Ah, the realities of modern education,” said Hugh.

“Your cousin was right about the importance of family history in the town,” said Beatrice. “Some of your neighbors managed to slip in several centuries of family deeds.”

“And did you meet Mrs. Fothergill?” he said.

“Mrs. Fothergill I will not soon forget,” said Beatrice. “She quoted Latin at me and then appeared very surprised when I replied. She seems to think I was hired to teach a language I don't know.”

“My understanding is that, after Mr. Puddlecombe, the upper-grades Latin teacher, left, quite suddenly, the gymnastics teacher, Mr. Dimbly, had to fill in, and he's a great chap for football and rope climbing, but I believe he couldn't write a word and will be relieved to have the classics taken away from him.”

“Mrs. Fothergill's nephew, a Mr. Poot, also speaks Latin, but at least he had the manners not to do so,” she said. “Mrs. Fothergill was at pains to tell Lady Emily how fortunate it will be for both her nephew and Harry Wheaton to have suitable companionship in the neighborhood.”

“I can't wait to tell Daniel,” said Hugh. “He will be delighted to know that Bettina Fothergill thinks us delinquent.”

“She is quite the least pleasant woman I have met today,” said Beatrice. “Despite the fact that she could not seem to keep from smiling.”

“Did you meet Lady Emily's daughter, Eleanor, yet?” asked Hugh. He pointed to where a young woman with a pale, oval face and coils of shimmering, fair hair had retired to a wicker chaise under a large tree. She was elaborately attired in a blinding white ensemble of cotton lawn and a tulle-covered hat the size of a cart wheel. Behind her, in deep and cool-looking shade, a severely attired nanny rocked a perambulator so enormous that Beatrice would not have been surprised to find it required a small horse to move it. “She is married to a German baron,” added Hugh.

“Perhaps you would introduce us,” said Beatrice. “She is such a confection that I suppose I am a bit unsure of myself. Is she as grand as she is beautiful?”

“If she tries to be, just ask her about the time Daniel and I had to fish her out of the canal as a child,” said Hugh. “She was always a great scamp, and we make it a point not to let her play the baroness around us.”

The afternoon was going just as planned, but Agatha Kent was beginning to crave one of the large French éclairs that were arranged on an ornate three-tiered stand in the middle of the snowy table piled with silver trays of delicacies. Shiny chocolate glaze dewed with moisture suggesting the chilled cream within, fleshy crusts barely tinted by their brief turn in the oven—Agatha wondered if she might allow herself just one in celebration of how smoothly Miss Nash's introductions had unfolded. It was a satisfaction, as the wife of an important civil servant, to prove one's subtle skills of influence. In a mood of gracious victory, she looked about her for an empty chair at one of the many small wrought-iron tables, and, seeing only one, she gathered her skirts with one hand and made her way over to where Bettina Fothergill was seated with her nephew.

“May I sit down with you, dear Bettina?” she asked. “Only I am in desperate need of some tea.”

Mrs. Fothergill, who had three finger sandwiches, two chicken aspics, and a separate plate containing a large piece of fruitcake, smiled while dabbing a napkin to her lips. The nephew rose slowly to pull out a chair.

“But of course, you look exhausted,” said Bettina. “This is my sister's son, Charles Poot. Charles, do run along so that Mrs. Kent and I may have a pleasant tête-à-tête.”

“At once,” he said, picking up his plate and almost bowing his waistcoat into his egg sandwich. Agatha disliked him immediately, not for his ears but for his air of oily cooperation. She could not imagine Daniel or Hugh receiving any such peremptory order from her without a suitably defiant remark.

“A cup of tea and just some plain bread and butter,” said Agatha to the footman. The éclair, she decided with a sigh, would have to be forgone, as to eat one in front of Bettina Fothergill would be a weakness, and Bettina was prone to pounce on weakness like a weasel on a frog.

“Your Miss Nash seems a very pleasant girl,” said the Mayoress. “Perhaps not of the age and experience that some governors had been expecting,” she added. “And, if anything, too qualified for our poor little educational efforts?” She continued to exude a smugness that Agatha found almost as nauseating as the green straw hat.

“She is very well qualified, and we are lucky to have found her,” said Agatha firmly. “The Headmaster is quite content in his new appointment.”

“I'm sure he is,” said Bettina and sighed. “Any whispers of discontent are only that—the merest of whispers.”

“I believe the Headmaster has made an excellent decision,” said Agatha.

“Of course one always desires to stand firmly behind the Headmaster,” said Bettina, gazing with fondness at a cucumber sandwich. “Though technically you do remember that the governors may exercise a right of approval?”

“So I have been reminded several times this afternoon.” Agatha concentrated on breathing silently in to the limits of her corset. The footman brought her tea, and for once she welcomed the fussing about: the setting down of the elegant porcelain cup and saucer, and the careful aligning of the small plate of bread and butter. “Is there something I should know, Bettina?”

“I wouldn't presume to say,” said the Mayoress. “Unlike you and dear Lady Emily, I was not appointed to the Board of Governors.” The school's board was legally required to appoint two female members. In a marvelous sleight of hand, Colonel Wheaton, who chaired the board, had suggested that husbands and wives should not serve together, and then, after Agatha had been confirmed, he had neatly removed himself from the board in favor of his wife, leaving Mayor Fothergill to face the wrath of his own wife. “Perhaps you should ask Miss Nash to attend the governors' meeting, just in case they wish to examine your choice further,” she added. Then she gathered her skirts, and sacrificing her plate of delicacies for the thrill of the victory, she bid Agatha good day and tottered away across the trodden-down grass.

Eleanor Wheaton's skin was as white as if she had come from a sanitarium, and her dress, viewed from a close angle, was of a quality and subtle sheen that suggested costliness. Her hair was piled in intricate curls, but she carried her head with great ease. She would not have been out of place at a royal garden party, thought Beatrice, and was almost more dressed than even the grandeur of her family home could endure.

“Eleanor, may I present Miss Nash,” said Hugh. “No doubt you will have heard all about her.”

“How do you do?” said Eleanor, inclining her head before turning to Hugh to add, “Your cousin has yet to come over and see me. He and Harry are drinking all the champagne, and as you can see, no one has thought fit to bring me any. Fräulein and I are quite parched, are we not, Fräulein?” She leaned towards the nanny and added, in the loud voice reserved by the English for speaking to foreigners in any part of the world, “
Wir sind
parched,
nicht wahr
?”

“My goodness, your German is appalling,” said Hugh. “What have you been doing all year?”

“I would tell you, but I may faint at any moment. Do bring Fräulein and me some refreshment, I implore you.”

“I'll be right back,” said Hugh, jogging off towards the marquee. Beatrice wished she had asked for another cup of lemonade, but she did not like to call after him.

“Miss Nash, this is Fräulein Gerta—Gerta,
das ist Miss Nash,
” said Eleanor with the bored air of one used to the flow of smooth and unimportant social niceties.

“Freut mich, Sie kennenzulernen,”
said Beatrice. The nanny nodded her head and broke into a smile that transformed her from stone to apple-cheeked youthfulness.

“Ganz meinerseits,”
she replied.

“You speak German?” said Eleanor. Her blue eyes flashed interest at once, and she threw off her air of boredom as she smiled widely. “Oh my goodness, perhaps you were sent to save me. I have been struggling like the devil to pick it up, but Fräulein speaks no English at all, and it is too exhausting to be always throwing myself across the chasm of understanding.”