Women and Children First (35 page)

Mr Grayling hadn’t been to the house since the previous summer but the caretaker, a man named Fred, lived there all year round to keep an eye on it, and he’d made sure it was cleaned and prepared for their arrival. When Reg wandered in through the kitchen entrance carrying his bag, it was Fred who showed him to his room. He could have been any age between forty and seventy, with the deeply tanned, weather-beaten face of a man of the sea, topped by bristles of silver hair.

‘You’re the new footman? I am putting you on the first floor, near the garage. It’s only a little room but you probably won’t be in there much.’

There was a single bed, a chest of drawers and a wooden chair under the window, which looked inland towards the coast road.

‘This is fine, thanks.’

All the staff would share one bathroom, while there was another for Mr Grayling and Miss Hamilton on the first floor, where they had adjoining bedrooms.
Are they sleeping in the same bed?
Reg wondered.
Surely not? What upper-class lady would risk her reputation by staying in a situation like this without a chaperone?
It was most unusual. He’d never heard of the like.

When he wandered into the kitchen, Alphonse was unpacking a big box of provisions he’d brought from New York, so Reg set to helping him. As he worked, he realised they could hear Mr Grayling and Miss Hamilton talking on the verandah. Their voices drifted in through the open window.

‘Won’t you come for a sea bathe, George? I’m sweltering after the journey but I don’t want to go on my own.’

‘I’ll sit on the beach and watch you, my dear.’

‘Plea-se,’ she wheedled, drawing out the syllable. ‘Aren’t you simply boiling?’

‘I don’t like sea bathing. The water’s cold and the salt makes your skin itch. But I would very much like to watch you.’

‘Oh, you killjoy! Very well. I’ll go on my own but if I am eaten by a shark it will be all your fault.’

Alphonse and Reg caught eyes, and Alphonse raised his eyebrows.

Ten minutes later, Reg wandered out the kitchen door to a little yard where laundry was hung to dry. Miss Hamilton was in the ocean, shrieking as she jumped over waves. She picked up a clump of brown seaweed and hurled it in the direction of Mr Grayling, who rolled over on the sand to get out of the way.

‘You’ll have to try harder than that,’ he yelled.

Suddenly Miss Hamilton emerged from the water, her navy-blue swimsuit clinging to her tiny figure. She sprinted up the sand to drop a frond of seaweed directly on his balding head, where it lay like a lock of new brown hair, before running back to the water again, out of reach of his flailing arms.

‘Touching, isn’t it?’ Molly whispered close by.

Reg grunted noncommittally. He had been thinking about Mrs Grayling. Did she often come to this summer house while she was alive? Did she enjoy sea bathing? Miss Hamilton had stepped extremely quickly into a dead woman’s shoes. Surely it must feel odd to her at the very least?

Looking around the summer house, Reg found a few items that he guessed must have belonged to its former mistress. Under a cupboard on the verandah, there was a pair of faded blue canvas plimsolls. There were still some grains of sand inside, and the insoles were worn into the shape of dainty feet.
Mrs Grayling’s feet.
On a shelf, there was a collection of seashells: dark purply-blue mussel shells, ridged white clam shells, fluted pink and cream conches, and long white razor shells.
Presumably her collection.
On a bookshelf, there were some women’s romance novels.
Also hers,
he guessed. The summer house hadn’t been as efficiently stripped of her possessions as the house on Madison Avenue. The last time Mr Grayling had visited, he must have been there with his wife.

The next day, Reg found another object from the past. Alphonse was planning to boil some lobsters that had been hauled in from the bay. Their pincers groped the air, opening and closing, as they struggled to escape the tank into which they’d been thrown, and Reg gave them a wide berth.

‘Find me the biggest pot you can,’ Alphonse asked, so Reg got down on his hands and knees to explore the pot cupboard and there, in a corner at the very back, he found a child’s rag doll. It was discoloured with mildew and covered in the remnants of spiders’ webs, but he could make out blonde hair fashioned from strands of wool, a face painted on canvas fabric and a hand-knitted dress and coat.

‘Whose was this, I wonder?’ he asked Alphonse, holding it up.

Alphonse grunted without looking. He was preparing a hollandaise sauce, and didn’t like to be disturbed at the tricky moment when he dripped wine vinegar and lemon juice into his egg and butter mixture.

Reg hauled out a large brass cauldron for the lobster and took the rag doll outside, to where Fred was repairing a lobster pot in the yard.

‘I found this,’ he said, holding it out. ‘Could it have belonged to the Graylings’ daughter?’

Fred looked up and his eyes widened. ‘Aw heck, I was supposed to throw out all of Alice’s things years ago.’

‘Alice. Was that her name?’

Fred glanced around to check no one was listening. ‘Yeah. Beautiful little thing, she was. When she died – must be seven years ago now – it broke their hearts clean in two.’

Reg got goose bumps, despite the warmth of the sun. He remembered the sadness in Mrs Grayling’s eyes, which he had thought was caused by her troubled marriage. ‘What happened?’

‘Scarlet fever carried her off. Mr Grayling can’t stand to be reminded of her. Thank goodness you found that doll and not him or I never would have heard the end of it.’

‘What age was she when she died?’

‘Seventeen, and one of the prettiest young gals you’ll ever see. She took after her mother’s side, not her father’s,’ he added in an aside. ‘That Miss Hamilton was a school friend of hers. Came here with the family one summer.’

‘Miss Hamilton!’ Reg was flabbergasted. ‘She was a friend of the family?’

‘That’s right. Everyone called her Vee back then, like the letter “V”. She was always a bit snobby, if you ask me – just like she is now.’

‘Are you sure it’s the same girl? She can only have been a teenager.’

‘They were both sixteen. It was the summer before Alice died. Those two were always giggling together, running along the beach, or sitting on the verandah combing their hair dry after going swimming.’

So Miss Hamilton is twenty-four now,
Reg calculated.
Older than he’d thought. Quite old for a woman to be unmarried
.
Many would consider her to be on the shelf.
‘I wonder why she has come here with Mr Grayling? It must be strange for her to return to a place where she used to be so happy with her friend.’

Fred tapped the side of his nose. ‘Over the years I’ve learned not to wonder about the affairs of upper-class folk. They don’t like it, and it does nobody any good. I have my own opinion about what’s going on, and I have a hunch you do too.’ He winked. ‘But we’ll keep it quiet, won’t we?’

Reg was disappointed. He’d have liked to hear what Fred thought. But he put the rag doll in the garbage can and went back to help Alphonse. This made the situation in the house all the more bizarre. How could Mr Grayling be having an affair with a friend of his daughter’s? It was almost akin to incest.

Alphonse had water bubbling in the pan, ready to cook the lobsters. He picked them up one by one just behind those lethal-looking front claws and placed them into the boiling water head first. Their tails flicked frantically as they tried to escape, but Alphonse put a lid on top to hold them there until he had the next one ready to drop in. Reg found it disturbing, but at the same time decided he’d like to try some if the staff were offered a taste of lobster for their meal.

He went to the drawing room to tell Mr Grayling and Miss Hamilton that dinner was served and as he approached, he overheard them quarrelling.

‘It may well be the most stunning necklace in the world, but nothing is worth that much. Do you realise a working man could live quite comfortably for a
year
on five hundred dollars.’

Reg cleared his throat and tapped on the open door. ‘Dinner, sir, miss.’

‘We’ll be right there.’

Everyone was living in much closer proximity than in the New York house and the walls were thinner, so Reg was able to hear their argument continue over dinner. Some of her friends had chartered a yacht in the Mediterranean and she wanted him to come with her on a cruise in September. He pointed out that it would still be only five months since his wife had died and far too soon for him to be seen in public with another woman. Besides, he had a business to run. She said she would die of boredom stuck out there on the beach for more than a few weeks, but that it was too unbearably hot to go back to the city. What did he expect her to do? They stopped bickering when Reg brought each course, but started again as soon as he closed the door, unaware that he could still hear them.

When the staff were summoned to eat, Reg was pleased to see that they each had half a lobster on their plates, smothered with Alphonse’s creamy sauce. He took a bite of the tender meat, and it was divine: sweet yet with a hint of saltiness, and the texture was satisfyingly chewy.

‘It’s very good,’ he told Alphonse.

‘Of course,’ the Frenchman agreed, in a tone that implied ‘How could it possibly have been otherwise?’

The days when Juliette could wear a corset were long gone. Her waist had completely disappeared and her belly bulged as if she had a plump cushion secured under her petticoat.

‘It’s a girl,’ Edna told her. ‘I can always tell from the bulge. Boys have a rounder shape and stick out much lower. I’ve never been wrong yet.’

Juliette could clearly feel the creature moving now, and was amazed at this life form that she was nurturing with her own cells. The weight of it slowed her and made her back ache. Its kicking, in combination with the heat, kept her awake at night. She began to feel curious about the new little person who was forming fingers and toes, organs and bones inside her. What kind of personality would the child have? Who would it take after?

‘Better not think about it,’ her mother advised, ‘or it will be harder to give it up when the time comes. I am its grandmother and I know I will feel the loss keenly, so it will be even worse for you, the mother.’

There was precious little else to think about, though. Every morning, Juliette rose early and took a walk in the fields round the house before the heat of the sun became too fierce. She ate her breakfast then sat on the verandah reading the newspaper, which their driver would fetch daily. She could make it stretch most of the morning if she read it from cover to cover, including the sports and business news. After luncheon, she would begin her letter to Robert, writing several drafts to make it as entertaining as she could. His own letter would arrive some time before afternoon tea, and she would reply to any questions he asked before sending the driver to the post office with hers, carefully copied out in a neat hand. Most of the time their letters arrived exactly four days after they were written, but on some agonising afternoons there would be no mail at all then the following day two letters would arrive together.

Juliette felt jealous of Robert’s life. He had business meetings with interesting people, he could stop by his gentlemen’s club and have a drink with friends, and he could dine out in New York’s finest restaurants. The only people she saw were her mother and Edna, the driver and occasionally the doctor. Robert complained of the fiery heat of the city in late July and wrote about how much he missed her, but Juliette knew that there was a difference between the way he missed her and the way she missed him. His life was full, while she had nothing to do except miss him. She felt a profound loneliness, like a huge empty cavern within. Sometimes she paced from room to room feeling as though she would go mad with longing for him.

And then one morning, she spotted her own name in the newspaper’s gossip column. Her eye was drawn down the page as if by magnetism. ‘Lady Juliette Mason-Parker should consider cutting short her trip out of town and hurrying back to keep an eye on her fiancé, Mr Robert Graham. He was seen at the Poughkeepsie racetrack yesterday with a very fetching young actress on his arm, and the pair seemed inseparable.’

The pain felt as though someone had plunged a knife into her chest. ‘No!’ she screamed, so loudly that her mother came running. Juliette clutched her neck.

‘What is it, dear?’

Juliette handed over the paper, pointing to the paragraph. Her mother sat down to read, and her face fell.

‘I don’t believe it! I’ve made so many wedding plans already. The church is booked and the invitation list drawn up …’

‘Shut up!’ Juliette screamed at her with such force that she hurt her throat. She rose and ran across the lawn down to the flowerbeds, where she would be out of earshot. She couldn’t bear to listen to one more word from her mother’s mouth.
Who could it be? He had never mentioned knowing any actresses. Could he have met someone at the theatre? Why hadn’t he said?

She walked along the flowerbed to the picket fence, racked with a hideous jealousy, the likes of which she had never experienced before. As a child she’d been jealous of her brother, because he was allowed to try activities that were forbidden to her and because he would one day inherit the estate while she would not, but that was nothing compared to the intense physical jealousy she felt when she thought of another woman kissing Robert, or lying in his arms. She wanted to rush straight back to town to confront him and make him promise that she was the only woman he made love to. If only the baby would come early. If only it would come
now
.

Suddenly she lifted her skirts, climbed over the picket fence and began to run full tilt across the field. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her mother frantically gesturing to come back but she ignored her. She leapt over rocks, swerved around trees and kept running as fast as she could with the midday heat pounding on her bare head. In the back of her mind was the reckless thought that maybe the exertion would bring on labour and she could get this child out of her. No matter that it was too premature to live. She began to get breathless and felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her side, which forced her to stop and bend double. Could it mean she was in labour? It felt more like a stitch. She slumped to the ground in the shade of a tree and leaned back against the trunk.

Had Robert got tired of waiting for her? Did he possess so little patience? Perhaps he was a Don Juan type who liked to carouse with many different ladies. She had only known him for three months, after all, and she hadn’t met any of his friends. Maybe they would consider this normal behaviour in New York? But it didn’t ring true of the man she loved. He was a gentle, honest soul – as far as she could make out.

He will read the newspaper,
she decided,
and if he doesn’t spot the item himself then someone will bring it to his attention. He knows that I read the same paper, so surely he will send me a telegram to explain that it’s all a misunderstanding?
She wondered how long it would take to receive a telegram in Saratoga Springs that had been sent from New York. It could be delivered within a few hours, certainly by dinner time. She would wait.

On return to the house, she was bright red in the face and breathing heavily. Her mother wanted to call for the doctor but Juliette refused.

‘I’m going to lie down for a while, and I don’t want to discuss that article with you any further. There’s obviously been some mistake.’

‘I hope so,’ her mother replied, pursing her lips as if dying to say ‘I told you so’.

Juliette lay on her bed all afternoon, watching the minutes tick by and listening for the sound of the telegram boy’s bicycle coming down the track towards their house. She should hear his bell, or the crunch of the tyres on loose stones. Edna brought tea on a tray but she refused to eat.

‘Miss, if I might say something?’ Edna ventured. ‘Your mother told me what’s upset you and even though it’s perfectly understandable, you should know that the people who write such things often make mistakes, or don’t know what they are talking about.’

Juliette was cross with her mother for discussing it with their housekeeper. What was the world coming to? But she took some comfort from the words. ‘I still think he should send a telegram to explain it to me.’

‘Maybe he will, or maybe he’ll think it’s beneath his notice.’ Edna folded her stout arms.

‘I suppose so.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Is there a telephone exchange in the town from which I could make a direct call to New York?’

‘There’s one on Main Street, but it’s only open in the morning.’

‘I can’t risk it.’ Juliette knew that Robert’s sister was now on holiday close by. She had written giving her address in case Juliette was ‘able to escape for an hour or two’. ‘I’ll have to wait for him to get in touch.’

Not only was there no telegram that day, but the mail didn’t bring a letter either, and the fact that there were two the following day did little to reassure her. Later in the week he mentioned that he had attended the Poughkeepsie races but he wrote only of the horses, without mentioning any companion. His tone sounded more distant now and the letters were shorter, although he never failed to say at the end that he missed her.

He’s slipping away from me,
Juliette thought miserably.
We only had four days together as husband and wife. I can’t lose him. It’s not fair.