The Crimson Rooms (43 page)

As I stepped aboard, I felt a pang for her, dressed to the nines in her yellow frock, and for the first time I fully comprehended what it was my brother had taken.

T
hough I would not have admitted it
even to myself, I arranged the meeting with Leah Marchant and Mrs. Sanders quite deliberately to take place on the afternoon of my tea with Nicholas. I was planting an obstacle in the way—assuring myself that it was not too late to change my mind about embarking on a love affair.

So, punctually at three, Mesdames Marchant and Sanders duly arrived in Arbery Street, both smartly turned out in clean frocks and best hats, impressed by the awful significance of being in a lawyer’s office. Miss Drake, who always behaved impeccably with clients, greeted them with quelling courtesy and ushered them upstairs to our bare little meeting room with its empty bookcase and round table covered by a felt cloth. Having offered to bring us tea, she left the door ajar. Wolfe was present in the building in case of trouble but had been told not to show his face otherwise.

The meeting began quite well. Leah Marchant, who’d recently had such a severe haircut that her dead-straight bangs drew a sharp line under her hat, was quiet, ominously so. She sat much too still and stared at me fixedly. Mrs. Sanders produced from her bag several sheets of paper on which were written names, addresses, and signatures (or crosses) of friends and neighbors who had signed a petition stating that Mrs. Marchant was a responsible parent and ought to have her children returned. “Leah says she was treated shameful by that woman in the ’ome. Quarter of an hour, less, is all the time she ’ad with them kids,” said Mrs. Sanders. “We’ve ’eard nothin’ since. She’s sick of messin’ about. She wants the kids back. So we’ve tooken matters into our own ’ands and this is what we come up with.”

“That’s very helpful, thank you. I shall ensure that this is sent to the chairman of the board.”

“And in the meantime, we was wantin’ to know what you’ve been doin’ to get the children back.”

“Well, in the first place we have been taking advice. I was as dismayed as Leah by the matron’s attitude. However, we don’t want to upset the home any further. We must tread carefully since it’s a delicate area.”

“
Delicate
for who?”

“The difficulty is that now the home has the right to keep the children unless we can prove that they will be materially better off with their mother. I’m afraid that the next step will be an inspection of the children’s living conditions, should they be returned. We would recommend that if you are not a regular churchgoer, Mrs. Marchant, you become one, so that we can get a priest to vouch for you. And it would be very helpful if there were relatives—your own or your husband’s, who could show an interest in the children.”

Leah’s face had reddened. Mrs. Sanders said: “Maud Grant over the way ’as a different man in every night and four kids under five crawlin’ in the gutter and nobody inspects ’er.”

“We will next write to the board, perhaps at the same time as we send your petition,” I continued, “requesting an interview with the chairman, Bishop Ogilvie, and for a timetable to be set when these investigations can begin. And in the meantime we may instruct an independent person, a health visitor or similar, to support you over the coming weeks.”

Mrs. Sanders put a restraining hand on Leah’s. “It’s all takin’ so long,” she said, “we can’t understand it.”

When Leah wept, her whole face was awash. “I want them back. I don’t understand. I want them back. They never will come. I know now. I might as well give up.”

“Now, now,” said Mrs. Sanders.

“It’s you,” wailed Leah, shaking a wet finger at me. “If it wasn’t for you I’d ’ave them. You are what’s keepin’ them away. I seen the way they treats you. You don’t ’ave the power.”

“It’s not a matter of power, Mrs. Marchant, it’s a matter of . . .”

“You set yourself up as somethin’ you’re not. I need a man to do this for me. They’ll listen to men. I don’t understand Mr. Breen not ’elping me.”

The situation at that moment seemed to me hopeless, given that there was no trust on either side. How would this volatile woman ever clear the obstacles the system had set her? And was she a fit parent?

“We’ll go now,” said Mrs. Sanders hastily, then murmured to me: “I told her not to say these things. The fact is, Miss Gifford, I believe that you will succeed because you want it as much as we does. That’s what I tell ’er. It’s not just another case to you.”

I shook their hands and watched them go down the narrow stairs. Leah, I noticed, left a faint, sweaty after-smell.

It was only a quarter to four. Even if I made a laborious note of the discussion, there was still plenty of time to reach Piccadilly by five. I had not managed to escape, after all.

My parents had escorted me
to tea at Fortnum & Mason more than a dozen years ago, as part of my eighteenth-birthday celebrations. They still cherished the hope that I might become a young lady—not a debutante, we weren’t in that league—but Mother dreamed that her bookish, wild-haired girl could yet be transformed, butterfly style, into a vision of lacy garments and soft white skin, capable of breaking a string of hearts. Excursions such as tea at Fortnum’s were designed to tantalize and refine. Instead I was bored. It was the summer holidays and James was staying with a school friend in Devon. For me, education was over forever. I had nothing to talk about, nothing to look forward to as I slouched over a plate of cakes for which I had no appetite. Father glanced at his watch and consumed a coconut tart in one mouthful. Mother said that the pale blue spotted taffeta gown she’d bought me was very becoming, “If only you’d sit up, Evelyn.” In truth, it was more of an effort to slouch in those tight corsets.

Today, anticipation of seeing Nicholas again was such that my legs hardly seemed attached to my body as I trod the deep-piled carpet in the wake of the very superior headwaiter, to whom I said that I was meeting a gentleman, Mr. Thorne. All the tables seemed to be occupied by aloof ladies in exquisite hats—there was no sign of Nicholas. I was shown to a table facing the door, where I tried not to mind that my clothes were shabby or that I felt displaced there among the starched cloths and waiters whose feet made not a sound on the carpeted floor as they whisked about with trays held high or pushing trolleys of cakes, their waistcoats and intensely white aprons so unlike those of their poor relations at Lyons.

My sense of dissonance grew until my head was spinning with other settings to recent unease—the boating lake at Regents Park, the prison interview room, Lyons, and James’s letter dropped into my lap—and I wondered what on earth I was doing amid these splashes of gilt and scarlet and cream, the muffled clinks, the murmur of conversation that signified wealthy people at leisure. In any case, Nicholas would surely not turn up, if for no other reason than that my note in response to his had been so cold—
I shall be pleased to meet you at five on Thursday . . . Sincerely yours—
because I had dreaded it falling into the hands of Miss Drake’s equivalent at his chambers.

At the next table was a grandmother wearing floor-length bombazine. Her granddaughter swung a stockinged calf under a frill of apricot voile.

My head knew that the most likely reason for Nicholas’s lateness was business in court, but my heart argued: If he felt for me as deeply as I for him, nothing would keep him away. Then I thought of another, far more invidious cause of absence: he’s realized his mistake, he’s told Sylvia of our little fling, and she’s brought him back into line. How could she fail, with those long lashes, the brilliance of her eyes, and the undulation of her hips in the white satin gown? And as the minutes passed, as a waiter pausing by the table asked me pityingly (it seemed to me) would I care to order tea while I was waiting (of course not, I had less than one and sixpence in my purse), I thought frantically that the whole affair had been a terrible joke, Nicholas had suggested Fortnum’s to humiliate me, to impress upon me that this was his world and I could never be part of it.

I had only to look at the other ladies, cut in the Sylvia mold but not as lovely, silk stockings, hats adorned with pleats and feathers, hair artfully arranged so that one little curl fell crisply on the forehead or in front of the ear, gowns draped at the neck and hips, embroidered sashes in jewel colors—sapphire, ruby, emerald—kid gloves, hand-painted scarves in fabrics Stella Wheeler would have sold her soul for, to know that I could never compete.

Still Nicholas did not come. I’ll give him just a few more minutes, I thought. It was gone twenty past five. Surely they would not be serving tea much longer. Because I’d handed in my briefcase at the cloakroom, I had nothing to read but the menu:
Anchovy toast . . . Smoked salmon . . . Cucumber
. . .
Selection of freshly baked . . .
My bones had gone liquid with misery as I anticipated leaving the store and plodding back to Clivedon Hall Gardens, the fumy pavements, the overcrowded omnibus, the unlocking of the front door, dinner at seven, as usual. My world was splintering into shards of gray and black; it was the death of James all over again, I couldn’t bear it, I must leave before I broke down in a shameful flood of uncontrollable tears.

“Evelyn.”

He was standing over the table, shockingly formal in black jacket and waistcoat, pinstriped trousers, hard collar; Nicholas, his eyes full of loving concern, his hand when he took mine very warm. One glance at his face, that unique and perfect ensemble of features, made my blood sing.

“I have been in agonies,” he said, hooking his foot around the leg of a chair and drawing it to the corner of the table so that he could be a little closer to me. Immediately, that alien place, the indifferent waiters, the lavish red drapes, the chandeliers, the chattering ladies, became insignificant. “The slowest judge in the world—fraud case. And then to top it all he was taken ill at three, something he’d eaten at luncheon. We waited half an hour and I was sure we’d get away early, adjourn till tomorrow, but just as we were packing our papers, back he comes, says we’ll plow on to the bitter end. I should never have risked making this arrangement with you, I might have known we’d run late, but I had to see you. Oh God, you look done in, you’re so pale and you’ve had no tea.”

The relief was a painful rush of heat to numbed senses. I couldn’t let go of the nightmare all at once. “I wondered if it was wise coming here,” I said stiffly. “I feel sure somebody will recognize you.”

“
Wise
? I’m not able to be wise at the moment. I didn’t think about it at all, I’m afraid, this was the first place that came to mind. And it’s not so bad. If someone does spot us, I’ll pretend we’re in a meeting. But God, you’re right. This is the very last place we should be. I want to be alone with you.”

Undone by the look in his eyes, I wanted to laugh or cry or seize his hand and cover it with kisses. As it was, the superior waiter brought tea on a trolley and there was endless fuss with a silver teapot, slop bowl, strainer, jug, wafer-thin cups with wide-brimmed, fluted edges (Prudence would not have approved—the tea could not retain its heat in such cups). Nicholas was not as deft as in the café near Toynbee, I noticed, his hand was shaking as he passed my cup. In that highly charged moment, as tea spilled, as our fingertips met on the edge of the saucer, I could almost have wished for the old Evelyn, who, sensing the danger, had stood up abruptly and walked away.

But it was too late. I sat so helpless before him that he laughed, buttered a scone, spread it lavishly with raspberry jam, and put it on my plate. “Eat. You must. I insist.” Then he added, in a low voice and with more tenderness than I had ever known: “How are you?”

I could only shake my head.

“Are you aware that I have thought of you every single waking moment?”

“And I you.”

We were pinned to our seats by the clink of china and the sudden trill of a piano improvising a sleepy bit of jazz. A couple of ladies drifted past, jasmine perfume, the flutter of lace. And beyond this cocoon, beyond the swathed windows, was the clamorous city, which would soon draw us apart again.