Authors: Elizabeth Buchan
‘No.’ Ellen raised herself on tiptoe. ‘It was different then.’ She turned to Ned and said crossly, ‘Cat got your tongue, Ned?’
The photographer issued a request and Dysarts and Sinclairs clustered around the couple. The Sinclairs were of middle height and inclined to plumpness and the Dysarts towered beside them. Inch for inch Polly matched James; Flora, overdressed in her bridesmaid’s silk georgette, was taller even than her sister, and Sir Rupert, chest braced in military fashion, seemed huge. An example of the rumpled good looks in which Saxon men specialize, Kit dominated the group. Sunburnt from a recent trip to Turkey and Albania, he kept himself a little apart from the others, and gazed over the fields as if he wished he was somewhere quite different. Long-nosed with blue eyes under heavy lids, Kit’s was almost a lazy face. But not quite. It had charm, yes, a hint of an unsettled depth, kept private – the face of someone, perhaps, who was a loner.
At last Polly and James broke free from the photographer and made for the waiting car, leaving the guests to pick their way down the path fringed by drenched shrubs to Hinton Dysart. Over the centuries obstinate Dysarts had refused to take the longer way round to the church and slashed their way with small swords and canes through the scrub until the path had become part of the local topography.
Her hat pulled down over her eyes as usual, Matty lagged behind because, she told herself, she wanted to look around. Having lived in London for most of her life, interspersed with quick dashes for the country Fridays to Mondays, her experience was urban and the smell of the churchyard whirling with blown lime blossom was pleasant. In the end, she could not put off the difficult part of the proceedings any longer and tagged on with the last of the guests.
She crossed the bridge, stopped and looked through the fringe of trees. Further up, there was a tiny boathouse and a landing stage made from a couple of planks. Even from that distance it was obvious the landing stage was rotting and the river in need of dredging. Several centuries ago it had cut a loop around the piece of land on which the house was built, before slicing through a mixture of clay and chalk towards Bentley. Matty watched the weed flap to and fro and tried to assess how deep the water was.
Then she turned her face towards the flat-fronted house – a dreaming house – whose windows reached almost to the lawn, surrounded by the tangle of vegetation and moss-encrusted statuary. It must have been beautiful once, she thought, mentally realigning a stone urn and clearing a path. It still was, in its rundown way.
A flotilla of cars was parked on the gravel in the drive and chauffeurs talked and smoked. Polly was posed on the steps up to the main door and her veil lifted and flurried in the breeze.
‘Hold it,’ ordered the photographer, and a puff of light exploded in the guests’ faces and made them blink. The group fractured and, with a nervous laugh, the bride picked up her dress and ran inside.
A scent of damp grass and of heavy, loamy soil filtered up to Matty. Starlings chattered under the huge plane tree by the river and a string of raindrops slid down the balustrade of the stone stairs. Slowly, Matty climbed the steps.
She placed her high-heeled shoe over the threshold of the hall and again she stopped. For as sure as she knew anything, she knew that turbulence and old grief were trapped within the walls of the house, imprisoned and unexorcised. As much in surprise as in dismay, for these feelings were quite new, she drew in a sharp breath. Then, as quickly as they had come, the dissonance faded. Only an echo remained. Head down, she passed quickly on to the dining room.
Whereas Daisy, ushered into the hall by several interested male guests, gave an exclamation of pleasure. She saw a square, beautifully proportioned room, with a plaster ceiling worked into flowers and pineapples, shabby Persian runners on a stone-flagged floor, an Adam fireplace, family portraits and a sofa, upholstered in faded brocade, set against the fireplace.
‘How... how complete,’ she said.
‘Good,’ said a voice behind her, and Daisy turned round.
‘I’m glad you like it,’ said Kit Dysart.
‘I do, very much.’
Kit found himself the focus of a pair of blue eyes so dark that the iris melted into the pupils. They were offset by lashes which were thick and glossy but not
nearly
long enough, according to their owner, good cheekbones, a wide mouth and a long neck. It was a fresh, vivid face, flushed with health, and rendered a little mysterious by the angle of the tilted hat. But it was not so much the arrangement of features that made Daisy, rather a fusion of spirit and body that lit her from inside.
She was used to scrutiny and she waited for a second or two before asking Kit, ‘Has your family always lived here?’
‘Yes. Originally there was a Tudor house which a great-great-great grandfather, Sir Harry, demolished. He had made a pile in India and came home to build a house in the latest fashion.’
‘Slaves?’
‘Good heavens, no. Sir Harry made his fortune trading in spices. Besides, slaves came from Africa.’
Daisy laughed and Kit thought he detected genuine relief in the sound. ‘Well, that’s all right, then. You’re quite respectable.’
‘We haven’t been introduced.’
‘Daisy Chudleigh, and who cares too much about introductions?’
‘Hallo, Daisy Chudleigh.’ Her smile hit Kit in the region of his stomach. Glowing, set off by her pink dress and hat, seemingly unconscious of the effect she was making, Daisy was not at all ordinary.
He stared at the carmined mouth as he said, ‘Of course, this kind of house is no longer fashionable.’
‘That’s what I like.’
At that Kit smiled back: the house was important to him, so much so that if he was asked to describe how important, he would have retreated in monosyllables. Pressed, he would have said it was part of his blood and bone.
‘Will you take me into the wedding breakfast?’ she was asking. ‘Providing you don’t have to field a great-aunt or something.’
‘My relations are dispensable,’ he said. ‘And Great-Aunt Hetta has just lost her escort.’ He offered his arm to Daisy.
‘Won’t she be mortally offended and rewrite the will?’ Daisy laid a finger on his arm.
‘That is a gamble I’m going to take.’
For a second, Kit and Daisy looked at each other, and then he led her into the dining room.
Uncharacteristically, Polly had set her heart on a large wedding, but her wish had not been granted. Rupert was too stretched financially and it was not, he informed his daughter, as if she was marrying a duke’s son. At this reproof, Polly burst into tears, a habit she had acquired during her engagement, and Rupert, gazing down at her shingled neck where the hairs were just beginning to grow, gave himself up to irritation.
‘Of course,’ he said in his cold way, which actually concealed powerful emotions, ‘it might have been different if you were marrying Bowcaster’s son.’
In the end, Rupert sold a pair of candlesticks, and, in return for their outlay of silver card cases, leather blotters, fitted luncheon baskets and toast racks laid out in ranks in the library, the guests were served
consommé Madrilene, filets de sole Bercy
and
selle d’agneau bouquetière
(or, as Rupert put it, French muck), washed down with a Château Haut-Brion 1913 and Château Yquem. The less-favoured guests were placed at tables in the library and drawing room. The more fortunate were in the dining room, one of Hinton Dysart’s most remarkable features as each of the four walls were covered by oil frescoes, so fashionable in the 1760s. They had been painted, went family lore, by an Italian artist who inadvisedly fell in love with Sir Harry’s youngest daughter and hanged himself in the cellar when Sir Harry banished him from the house. The frescoes were still lustrous and dominating, deflecting attention from the smoke marks on the ceiling, the flakes of paint scattered under the windows, and the lacework of mould on the wooden shutters.
Matty noticed these details. Those were precisely the sort of things that caught her eye, and as the conversation and bursts of laughter (mainly from Daisy’s end of the table) rose and fell, she built up a mental picture of the house. Clearly it required attention, from the grimy plasterwork, to the linen tablecloths whose hems had unravelled. Instinctively, she understood that this was a house whose bones were beautiful, would always be so, but which, like age spots, imperfections were beginning to mar. She directed her gaze through the window to the garden and found herself wishing she was out there, walking through the damp grass over the shadowed lawn.
‘Miss Verral?’ Her neighbour touched her on the elbow. ‘You’ll have the hot news from London. Is it true the Prince of Wales is selling up his steeplechasers because the King requested it?’
The two subjects, Aunt Susan had taught Matty, that will
always
get you through sticky conversational patches are the Royal Family and ghosts. Falling at the first hurdle, Matty was regretful. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’
‘Oh.’ Her neighbour, a young man with a crop of freckles and greased-back hair, was disappointed.
I must try, thought Matty frantically. ‘I did hear someone say—’ she began, but was interrupted by an elderly gentleman who exclaimed, ‘Socialism?’ Then again on a higher note. ‘
Socialism?
The devil!’
‘Mr Beaufort.’ An earnest woman with plaits coiled like earphones tried to argue. ‘It is a fact of life. Socialism has arrived, and we have to live with it. Now we have a Labour government again.’
‘And a woman in the cabinet,’ said Matty who made a point of reading newspapers.
‘Good God,’ said Mr Beaufort and turned away. Over the bowls of fruit, Matty’s eyes met the woman’s and they exchanged a smile. Matty felt better.
An hour later, Polly stood in her bedroom in her petticoat. Her abandoned wedding dress lay on the floor beside her. Flora knelt to pick it up.
‘You next,’ said Polly brightly, to mask the nerves that had begun to jangle at the prospect of being alone with James – and the other business. Flora brushed at the creases in the dress and draped it over Polly’s single bed.
‘I should jolly well hope so,’ she said.
The bride sat down on the bed with a thump and kicked off her satin shoes. ‘Did my dressing case get packed... and my night things?’ Her wedding ring was very obvious on her left hand. ‘Flora...’ She looked up at her sister. ‘You will come and visit us? Often, I mean. For a decent stay.’
Flora squeezed Polly’s hand. ‘Course, silly.’
Polly fingered the bedspread. ‘I’ve always hated this colour,’ she said in a tone that indicated she was making discoveries. ‘But now I don’t want to leave it.’
‘Get dressed, Polly.’ Flora held up Polly’s chiffon going-away dress.
Polly shivered. ‘I’m a bit nervous.’
Flora fastened the tiny buttons up the back and began on the sleeves. ‘Everyone seems to survive it,’ she said carefully, drawing on a knowledge of married life that was vague in the extreme.
Flora watched Polly do a passable imitation of floating down the main staircase, at the bottom of which the guests had bunched, and felt guilty. She did not like James and disliked even more the rented house on the outer fringes of Kensington.
The guests pressed forward to say their goodbyes. Polly extended a hand, glove voguishly wrinkled at the wrist, and muttered her goodbyes to the cheeks pressed against hers.
‘Good luck, Polly.’
‘Good luck, Mrs Sinclair.’
She touched her cheek to Flora who kissed her sister extra hard to make up for her disloyalty before Polly disappeared through a snowstorm of confetti into the waiting car.
‘Thank God,’ said Flora to Kit as they watched it disappear in a shower of gravel. Her shoes pinched and there were damp patches under her arms. ‘Now perhaps everyone will go.’ Kit gave her a nudge and Flora looked to her right.
‘Oh, Lord,’ she said. Matty, who stood beside her, had, quite obviously, overheard. ‘Sorry, but it has been a long day.’ Keen to make up for her rudeness, she continued, ‘I gather you and the Lockhart-Fifes are coming over for a game of tennis tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Yes,’ said Matty. ‘We are.’
The aftermath of any big event leaves a backwash and it was evident in the unnatural languor of the Dysarts the following day. After ordering the young to shake up their livers with a good game, Rupert took the adults off to the drawing room where he bored Susan Chudleigh with family history over anchovy toast and strong Indian tea.
Kit had hauled his old flannels out of the drawer, and Flora had located a dismal pair of shorts from Polly’s room. They faced an immaculately turned-out pair of Chudleighs who, after the first exploratory balls, proved excellent players. Dysart solidarity was called on. Kit, disregarding aching legs and the heavy feeling around his eyes, began the attack. Marcus riposted with punishing shots and Daisy proved equally fiendish. Although not as powerful a player as her brother, she was fast and accurate. The game swung this way and that. Flora hugged the back line, Kit guarded the net, the Chudleighs beat a path back and forth across the turf and shouted encouragement to each other and insults to the opposition.
‘Come on, Kit,’ said Daisy at one point. ‘You’re a walkover.’
Roused, challenged – and disturbed by the white figure – Kit shot a return over the net. Marcus lobbed the ball to the back of the court. Flora swooped low and sent it back.
‘Got you,’ Kit called.
Daisy laughed. ‘By no means.’ And so it went on. Back and forth went the ball and so did the challenges and Matty, who never played games because her heart had been weakened by rheumatic fever, watched at the side and gained the curious impression that Kit and Daisy were holding some kind of private conversation.
She sat on the bench and sipped at the lemonade issued by an alarming woman whom the family called ‘Robbie’ and fell into her habit of negative reflection. Why am I not like Daisy, fast and free? Why do I lack that connection (Matty thought of it in terms of an electric plug) that would link me into life? That would make me like they are.
None of these questions produced sensible answers, and she thought of the mother she had never really known and wondered for the ten-thousandth time if Jocasta would have been the sort of person to help her daughter.