The Victory (65 page)

 
It was not in Lucy's nature to think of asking anyone for help.
It was fortunate, therefore, that she had two servants who
cared very deeply for her, and who, in the course of an ellipti
cal and sotto voce conversation outside her chamber door,
determined that her ladyship ought not to be alone.

‘
Somebody ought to be sent for,' Docwra said with a signi
ficant nod.

‘
Lady Strathord?' said Parslow after a moment's thought.
‘Her. It's best. But how?'

‘
Send a message,' Parslow said. 'You write it, I'll find
someone to take it.'

‘That Charlcott' — with a world of scorn — 'won't like it.'

‘
We won't ask him. The grooms look to Mr Thorn for their
orders, and him and me get on very well. Leave me alone for
the sending — you just do the writing.’

In consequence, Héloïse left Mathilde in Roberta's care,
and hurried down to Wolvercote. She was received with open
relief by everyone except the butler, who, though in truth
extremely glad to have someone to take over the responsibility
— for Edward was no more use in the present case than Lucy
— felt it would diminish his standing to admit it.

Wïse, however, had commanded servants since she was a
small child, and was well able to cope with displays of temper
ament.

‘
I shall have to rely on you for everything, and ask you very
many questions, I'm afraid,' she said, looking up at him with
wide, sad eyes. 'I hope you will not mind it, for I know you
are always very busy, and this will be so much extra work for
you.’

Upon which Charlcott drew himself up and assured her
magnificently that he had a good staff and would cope very
well, my lady. She was so small and brown, like a little
sparrow, and the sound of his name, rendered
Sharlco' by
her ladyship's pretty, broken accent, won all that served him for a
heart. His demeanour towards her never unbent, but he did later say to one of the footmen, whose report on the matter
was not believed in the servants' hall, that the Comtesse was a
very proper, agreeable lady indeed.

Chetwyn's death was a sad and horrifying business, and
everyone in the house, each in his own way, turned to Héloïse
for comfort and reassurance. It was a position and a duty for
which she had been bred from the moment, like an infant
princess at the age of five, she had been given her own house
hold of a nurse, a maid, and a small negro boy. Her years in the convent had reinforced the lesson and given it the depth
of a philosophical base, and her marriage at the age of
fourteen, and all the subsequent troubles of her life had
provided her with ample opportunity to practise and polish
her skills.

So with apparent ease she took up the reins of the house
hold. She ordered meals, listened to the housekeeper's daily
report, gave the butler instructions about the reception or
denial of visitors. She inspected the mourning-draperies,
which had been stored away with herbs in cedar boxes in a
remote attic since the death of the old earl, and gave orders
for them to be beaten out, repaired where necessary and
hung. She instructed Charlcott to put the livery servants into
mourning, and the sewing-maids to sew weepers on to the
sleeves of the lower servants.

She spoke with the estate carpenter about the construction
and furnishing of the coffin, with the sexton about bells and
vaults, with the priest of the church of St Mary about the
funeral service, with the church-wardens about the proper arrangement of banners and the draping of pews, and with
the head gardener about flowers. She interviewed his late
lordship's secretary about the issuing of invitations, the
housekeeper and the cook about funeral baked-meats, Charlcott about accommodation for the guests who had to travel a long distance, and the head groom about the accommodation
of their horses, and the provision and furbishment of the
funeral-car and black horses to convey the coffin to the
church.

She spoke to the family lawyer about the reading of the
will, the disposition of the estate, and the immediate provision
of funds for its upkeep until the will was proved; and to the
coroner, a local physician of great standing, about the
inquest. She advised Miss Trotton and the nursery-maids about mourning-clothes for the children and the part they
would have to play in the funeral. And in between, she found
time to receive the more important of the stream of neigh
bours and tenants who arrived at all hours of the day to pay
their respects and condolences.

But all these things were incidental to her primary task of
comforting Lucy and Edward through the sad and exhausting
business of the inquest, which was held in the great hall in
order to accommodate as many of the villagers and tenants,
who were all naturally anxious to be present, as possible; and
then the funeral. The death of an earl, of old family and long-
established estate, was not something that could be passed over lightly, and the funeral had to take place with all due
ceremony. The local people expected it, the family demanded
it, and the standing of the widow and the heir required it.

Though Chetwyn had had no immediate family, no family
as ancient as his could be without a vast network of cousins,
second-cousins, and connections-by-marriage, who closed in
upon Wolvercote from the four corners of England, together
with friends from various walks of society, representatives of
the nobility, and neighbours from all over Oxfordshire and
the five adjacent counties. When the day came, a mild day
with a high, still, grey sky, an immensely long procession of
carriages made its way at walking-pace down the long,
winding drive from the house to the east gate.

The funeral car was drawn by six black horses, with beaded
headdresses topped by black plumes, their long black saddle
cloths edged with swinging fringes almost to the ground. Each
was led by a groom in mourning-livery, while behind the
funeral-car Thorn led his late lordship's horse, saddled and
bridled, to shew he had died in a sporting accident. In the
first carriage behind rode Lucy, almost invisible under the
weight and length of veils hanging from her black crape
bonnet, and Roland, looking very small and bewildered and rather pinched about the face. He did not seem sure what to do with the black kid gloves and new black hat he had been
given, and glanced from time to time at his mother, as though
he would have liked to ask her what was happening. But she
was too far withdrawn from him to be approached, and he
could only sigh and remember Trot's instruction not to fidget.

In the crowded, tiny church, hung with the achievements
and banners of the Chetwyn family collected over the past
three hundred years, every corner and ledge had been filled
with flowers by the deeply-moved head gardener, Pole. He
had known his late lordship from a boy, when he had been
merely a gardener's boy himself. He had often saved him
from a beating for stealing peaches from the hot-house, by pretending to have done it himself; and now performed the
last service he would ever do him by denuding every bed, and
annointing each bowl and vase of magnificent blooms with a
helpless sprinkling of warm salt water.

In the front pew, the new little lord sat stiffly, his feet in tight new nankin boots dangling well clear of the floor, and
raised a freckled face and round, Morland-blue eyes to the
Rector, who spoke very long and very slowly from the pulpit,
and occasionally addressed a stern and exhortative look
towards the seventh earl when the words 'duty' or 'responsib
ility' came into his peroration. The stern looks had the effect of making the seventh's earl's thumb, over which he still had
lamentably little command, creep towards his mouth for
comfort. The black kid gloves had been hastily dyed for the occasion, and the thumb tasted horrible, but for the moment,
it was all there was to hold on to in a world grown unfamiliar.

The bell began to toll, the sexton's party took the strain,
and the coffin was lowered into the family vault; and so James
Cavendish Manvers Chetwyn, sixth Earl of Aylesbury,
Viscount Calder, Baron Godstow, Knight of the Garter, and
Hereditary Warden of the Port Meadow, was laid to rest
amongst his ancestors.

*

At last the visitors were all gone, and the household was
reduced to normal proportions. Héloïse sat with Lucy and
Edward in the Countess's private sitting-room. Lucy, with
Jeffrey dozing on her lap, stared into the fire, while Edward
and Héloïse talked desultorily about the departed guests.

‘So what will you do now?' Edward asked Héloïse when the
subject was exhausted. 'I suppose you must be eager to get
back to London, to see how Mathilde goes on.'

‘
She will do very well with Roberta,' Héloïse said serenely.
'Of course, I must go back sooner or later, but there is no
hurry.’

Lucy looked up at last. 'You needn't stay on my account, if
that is what you are thinking,' she said. 'I'm grateful to you
for coming — I couldn't have managed without you — but I
shall be quite all right now.’

Héloïse looked at her doubtfully. 'I don't think you should
be on your own.’

Lucy grimaced. 'On my own? With a houseful of servants
cossetting me, and a nursery full of children?'

‘That isn't the same thing,' Héloïse said.

‘I know that,' said Lucy. 'But it's how you live.’

Héloïse did not reply. How could she point out to Lucy the
essential difference, that she lived in intimate daily contact
with her children and her servants, while Lucy saw only those
whom she requested to see, and was wrapped around always
with the distancing of rank?

‘
I don't think you ought to stay here, at any rate, Luce,'
Edward said. 'I shall have to go back soon — there's so much
to do at this time of year. Why don't you go to London? You'd
have all your friends around you there, and things to do to
keep your mind occupied.’

Lucy stroked Jeffrey's long ginger back, and thought of
London, and of the house in Upper Grosvenor Street which
she had shared first with Chetwyn and then with Weston. Its
emptiness now would be intolerable, she thought. How could
it be that in such a short time she had been bereft of the two closest companions of her life? What was there left for her?
Where could she go now, to find a purpose, a direction?
It doesn't matter, she thought bitterly, to anyone or
anything, what I do from now on. It doesn't matter if I live or
die. Although she knew it was irrational, she felt she had been
betrayed by those closest to her. They had died and gone
away, and left her directionless, lost in the vast, featureless
spaces of the rest of her life.