Dorothy Eden (12 page)

“Oh yes, on Long Island.” Hetty saw that something more was expected of her. “I once had a bad fall off my pony. I didn’t care for riding after that.”

“Oh, you must overcome those things. Julia would have remounted at once. Wouldn’t you, dear?”

Instead of answering the question, Julia said, “Hugo suggested beginning on Patsy.”

“That old rocking horse,” Kitty exclaimed. “Don’t worry, Hetty. Even Freddie wouldn’t fall off Patsy.”

“Do you want me to teach Freddie, too?” Julia asked.

“He’s only five. And rather timid. Lionel said he wasn’t to be hurried. Still, it might give him confidence to see a grown-up learning at the same time.”

Had that been another suggestion of Julia’s to ridicule her? Hetty wondered. The grown woman and the little boy taking it in turns to mount the safe old rocking horse.

“What fun,” Hetty murmured satirically.

Freddie was a peaky child, scarcely ever out of the company of Nanny Grainger. He had come up to her once in the garden and, raising his small moony face, had asked, “Who are you?”

“You know me, Freddie. You came to my wedding. I’m your new aunt.”

“No, you’re not my
aunt
.”

Even from so small a person the disbelief came as a shock.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I know you’re not.”

“Master Freddie,” admonished Nanny Grainger. “That’s very rude. I don’t know what made him say it, my lady. He knows very well who you are. You must apologise, Master Freddie.”

Freddie remained stubborn.

“But if she was pulled out of the sea she must be a mermaid. Only she’s got feet. I can see her feet. Look.”

“You get too many fancies, Master Freddie.” Nanny Grainger was plainly not a fanciful woman. Which was bad luck for Freddie who obviously had a splendid imagination. He was a strange little boy. Difficult to rear, Kitty had said, and she had added that she was unable to have any more children. So Freddie would eventually be the heir to Loburn, unless Hugo had a son. No wonder Hugo was eager for his wife to have a quick pregnancy and a male child.

But if this happened, Hetty wouldn’t have Freddie shut out. He had a wistful, if slightly bizarre, appeal. She knew all too well the hurt of being shut out, listening to laughter behind closed doors, lonely, longing to be part of the warm gay scene of comfort and privilege which was her right. Freddie obviously took after his father, who was clever and bookish. Hetty was curious to meet Lionel. But not over-impatient.

Dinner that night finally ended with Lady Flora saying she was a little tired and would like to have her coffee upstairs. Julia obediently sprang up, putting a wrap round the fragile shoulders and helping her from the room. So proud a young woman in the role of nurse was decidedly incongruous, and would have been sad had Hetty any pity to give. But pity in this situation was dangerous and she guarded against it.

Kitty excused herself, saying she wanted to write to Lionel.

“You’ll find us dreadfully quiet in the evenings, Hetty, now the men are gone.”

“I don’t mind that.”

“But didn’t you have a very glittering social life in New York? Hugo says you did.”

“I’ve changed. I don’t think I’ll ever be dancing all night again. At present I just want to be quiet. And anyway I’m going upstairs to write to Hugo, too.”

In spite of that explanation Kitty seemed to give her a sceptical look, as if she knew Hetty’s real intention, which was to search among Hugo’s papers for letters from Clemency. She had to get that handwriting familiarised before writing to Hugo, and before going to the bank.

It was very quiet in the big bedroom where so many Hazzards had been born, loved and died. The lingering daylight—for it was almost June—showed the view of the yew walk, a famous view, Hugo had told her. But even in broad daylight she had found it dark and sad, with the small pointed yews, like sharpened pencils, leading to an ornamental lake which always seemed black no matter the time of day. She had shivered on seeing it the first time, and now she was still haunted by the sight and memory of water. She hastily put on all the lights, but the room still seemed dim and shadowy. The curtains moved slightly with a sound like the rustling of heavy silk skirts, and a thin chill came into the air. Hetty checked to see if a window was open, but this was not so. There didn’t seem to be any wind. The trees were black against the pale sky, no leaves stirring.

Hetty shrugged. It must be the ancestors protesting about the little usurper. If she could hold her own with the living Hazzards, she was more than a match for the ancestors.

But the room was undoubtedly ghostly. It wasn’t meant to be occupied by a woman alone. The bed, which had seemed only relatively capacious when Hugo lay beside her, now looked enormous, an uninhabited country. A shape seemed to move in the silver-framed mirror on the dressing table. No, that was surely only a reflection of herself, caught by chance. Though it would not be surprising if phantom images of other women, brushing long ropes of hair, undressing, climbing into the big bed nervously or eagerly, drawing the bed curtains, waiting for their husbands or their lovers, lingered in that bland gleaming surface.

She thought of her own husband. She had enjoyed being in bed with Hugo. At first his injured leg had pained him. Then he had forgotten it as she had forgotten the initial pain of her virginity. Eventually she had found making love a delightful occupation. She thought she must have inherited her mother’s generous and sensuous nature. The memory of those nights with Hugo stirred in her body, and she longed for him to be here with her now. He was not going to get a bad bargain. Eventually he would love her. Or was it more important that she should love him?

She was allowing herself to dream, and deliberately postponing her first act of desecration in this house.

For it was desecration to go through a man’s private belongings, even though the man was one’s husband. Bought and paid for. Though legitimate only by virtue of a false signature on a marriage certificate…

Hetty discovered a locked drawer in Hugo’s bureau and, after a search, the key that opened it.

Inside was an untidy collection of papers, bills, business letters, documents, and, carelessly among this mish-mash, two letters on thick expensive writing paper. One from Clemency, the other from Julia.

She read Clemency’s first because she was curious to study the handwriting and the style of the letter. To her relief, the handwriting was distinctly similar to her own, the careful script their governess, Miss Ashford, had taught them. So that was another problem solved.

Clemency wrote:

My darling husband-to-be,

The time is getting short now. Everything is arranged and we sail early in May on the Cunard liner, the
Lusitania.
It is all so exciting I can scarcely eat or sleep, and Mother says I am getting pale and skinny and you won’t care for that. Will you mind how I look, Hugo? I hope you will. After the sea voyage you will find me with red cheeks like a country girl. I have got the most fabulous trousseau. I can’t wait to show you everything, and I promise you you will be proud of your Yankee bride. You will be there when the
Lusitania
docks at Liverpool, won’t you? And you don’t need to wear a red carnation because I will recognise you instantly! As you had better recognise your so-nearly wife! I promise to love you very much, and I send you hugs and kisses now.

Clemency

It wasn’t a grave that had opened, rather a chilly chasm through which cold winds blew, and Clemency’s light-hearted laughter echoed, though growing fainter and fainter.

Hetty hugged her arms round herself, shivering miserably. Eavesdroppers, she had always heard, and similarly people burrowing into private matters, found nothing to comfort them. Was she to be haunted all her life by the memory of the gay extrovert girl whom poor Hugo had thought he was getting for his wife? Had he been terribly disappointed? He hadn’t showed it, and she had been too nervous to try to explain her quietness and pallidness, other than attributing it to the shipwreck.

On his next leave she would make it up to him. She would have some exciting clothes, and put colour on her cheeks, and chatter vivaciously. Or would she? Perhaps he hadn’t been too discontented with the sea-changed wife he had got. After all, grave and terrible events were shadowing his life, too. There wouldn’t have been much of a place for party-loving young women in the England she had come to. Hugo might have been apprehensive as to how he could have kept that kind of girl happy, and therefore had been grateful for her change in character.

Anyway, there was no use in sitting here pondering over things to which there was no answer. Only living would provide the answer.

And she must remind herself for the thousandth time that she hadn’t been responsible for Clemency’s death. There was no need to feel this weight of guilt.

Julia’s letter was another matter. Hetty struggled with her conscience. It was loathsome reading private letters. But curiosity, and her instinct for survival in the future, overcame her qualms, and she read,

My dearest,

I simply cannot and will not accept what you told me last night, that you intend putting Loburn first, and saving it for your family. You expect me to understand that because I come from an old home, too. But mine has broken up and vanished and the world hasn’t come to an end.

I know you think of your mother and your brother, and the prospect of having an heir yourself who will be stronger than poor little Freddie. And of course of your horses, and your staff, and your debts. But me, me, me, I am alive and I deserve something. If you really mean to marry this American you can’t expect me ever to be a friend of hers. I will stay here and make her suffer. That is the kind of woman I am. Your kind. We could have a marvellous life together, even without money. Whatever you do, I will never give you up. Never, never, never.

Your Julia

Across the bottom of this passionate outpouring Hugo had written in his slashing handwriting, “Answered in the negative. Not practical. How could we live without money?”

But for some reason he had kept the letter. Hetty regretted that. Her fingers were poised to tear the missive in fragments, then she desisted. Old families preserved letters, they were part of their history and made interesting reading for generations to come. She was a member of an old family now. She must live by the rules.

Anyway, she was not afraid of a vengeful Julia who in spite of her threat had had to give Hugo up. And she could make certain that Hugo never had any desire to reread old love letters. It was all up to her. One day Hugo might add a further comment to his practical answer to Julia. “The American marriage turned out splendidly …”

It was comforting to dream like that. But even as she did so the curtains blew inward again with a long shushing sigh. Suddenly the room was distinctly chilly.

A
LTHOUGH SHE WAS ABLE
to shake off the effects later in the morning, Hetty found that waking up in a state of apprehension was becoming a habit. For the first few days after Hugo’s departure she couldn’t even decide where she was. The big square room with the panelled walls and carved ceiling was strange and unidentifiable as her own. What right had she to be in this wide bed with its rich faded hangings suggesting a century or more of loved and legitimate brides? In the shadowy dawn, half awake, half drugged by nightmare, she developed a phobia that there was something menacing in the big mahogany wardrobe, something that moved. Sometimes it was an empty army officer’s uniform swaying on its hanger, sometimes a naked newly-born baby, sometimes, worst of all, a woman soaked with sea water who never turned her face. But if she had done so it would have been Clemency’s.

Even when she became fully awake, with the first sunshine of a soft English summer day touching the windows, and the garden alive with birdsong, it wasn’t until Effie knocked gently at the door and came in with her early morning tea in a silver teapot on a carefully-laid tray that she was able to sit up and begin the day with any kind of composure.

She had begun to enjoy the custom of taking tea before breakfast. By the time she had drunk the second cup out of the delicate fluted porcelain, the last shreds of nightmare, like trails of evil fog, had dispersed and she was beginning to relish once again her new identity.

Effie had a routine. She would say “Good morning, my lady,” with just the right amount of deference. Then she would put the tray on the bedside table, draw back the curtains and lay out the heavy cream silk robe that Hetty could still not quite believe was hers. Kitty had persuaded her to buy it that day in Cirencester when she had also found the simple well-cut coat and skirt in which to be married, and the lacy tea gown and the crimson silk dinner gown, and a little feathered hat for church on Sundays. After all, someone always had to sit in the Hazzard pew, and it ought, as often as not, to be the mistress.

The thought of all these things made her mood change from apprehension to an almost wild euphoria. She was becoming subject to bewildering swoops of spirits, from high to low, and then to high again.

The clothes were all that hung in the big wardrobe. There were only those innocent things, nothing sinister at all. And to sit at the window in the silk robe sipping her tea was the most delicious luxury. Although it would be more enjoyable when Hugo was home again.

What richness lay in the future. The only anxiety she must inevitably have was about Hugo’s safe return.

There was no worry over letters from New York, for instance. Two came together, both addressed to Lady Hazzard, and at first Hetty was scared out of her wits.

“But, Hetty, aren’t you pleased? They must be from your family,” Kitty said.

They were at breakfast. The letters were beside her plate. Hetty knew that Kitty had seen her wince, even if Julia had not. Lady Flora rarely came down to breakfast, luckily, for those big pale blue eyes, deceptively vague, in reality saw a great deal.

I haven’t got any family, Hetty could have answered. But officially she had. Uncle Jonas. The first letter was from him: