A Countess Below Stairs (12 page)

‘Really?’ Muriel’s tone was not encouraging. ‘What did he do?’

‘He murdered his wife’s lover,’ said Rupert, looking at the wild-eyed young courtier nonchalantly posed with one hand on his hip. ‘Or the man he believed to be his wife’s lover: a young architect who built the Temple of Flora and the gothic folly in the woods.’

‘And where does he do his haunting?’ said Muriel, humouring her fiancé for she did not, naturally, believe in ghosts.

‘Oh, not in the house. Out in the folly where the dark deed was done. It’s quite a big place, a sort of tower with three rooms one on top of the other with a dome on the top. No one uses it now and it’s kept padlocked. The servants swear he howls and wails in repentance, and of course no one will go near it in the dark.’

‘One must allow for foolishness and superstition in the uneducated classes,’ said Muriel.

‘Yes, I suppose one must,’ said Rupert, a little bleakly.

He looked at his watch. In an hour. Potter would be back with the mare. The excitement in the groom’s voice on the telephone had told Rupert all he wanted to know and, at the thought of the gift he was giving Muriel, his spirits soared. He had taken so much from her already, was so greatly in her debt, but the bridegroom’s present to the bride would at least be a worthy one!

‘Shall we go outside?’ he suggested. ‘You must have seen enough of my ancestors to last you a lifetime.’

‘Not at all, dear,’ said Muriel, who was peering intently at the portraits, ‘I find them very handsome.’ She turned to smile coquettishly at him. ‘Just like you. And there don’t seem to be any taints or blemishes which is unusual in so old a family.’

‘Taints?’ said Rupert, puzzled. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘Well, you know… deformities, inherited diseases,’ said Muriel, drawing her skirt away from Baskerville. ‘Hare lips and so on,’ she continued. ‘Or mental illness. Though that would hardly show up in a painting, I suppose.’

Rupert was looking at her in rather an odd manner. ‘I don’t know of any; they were a very ordinary lot as far as I know. But if there were, Muriel, would it really matter to you?’

Muriel smiled and patted his arm with her plump, soft hand. ‘You must remember my great interest in eugenics. And once you have met Dr Lightbody, which I hope will be very soon, I know you will become as interested as I am.’

As they walked towards the garden door they met Pearl, carrying coals to Uncle Sebastien’s room.

‘That reminds me,’ said Rupert, as she bobbed a curtsy and scuttled respectfully away. ‘How is Anna making out? It’s early, I know, but are you satisfied with her?’

Muriel frowned, a neat and parallel gesture. ‘Yes,’ she said doubtfully. ‘She is deft and painstaking but I confess, dear, that I don’t really care for her. There is something not quite right about the girl.’

‘You don’t find her disrespectful or anything of the sort? Because I don’t think she means—’

‘No, I can’t say she’s disrespectful,’ said Muriel, who prided herself on her fairness, ‘but for a servant she is too interested. A good maid should be like a piece of furniture: there, but unnoticed.’

‘Yes,’ said Rupert, who saw exactly what Muriel meant. You could say a lot about Anna, but not that she was like a piece of furniture. ‘She’s only temporary, you know; part of the intake to prepare for the wedding. I’m looking to you to engage what servants you will afterwards.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say that,’ answered Muriel as they prepared to cross the stableyard, ‘because I do think quite a lot of changes will be needed. For example, I really think we should have matched footmen. In a house of this quality, to have footmen of different sizes gives a very untidy appearance. I should like them about six foot two, but I daresay we had better content ourselves with six foot, so many people having been killed in the war.’

Rupert looked up quickly to see if Muriel was joking, but her lovely face was placid and serene.

‘Isn’t that a little grand for us?’ he said. ‘They have them at Longleat and Blenheim, I know, but Mersham is hardly a palace. And James, who’s been with us for years, can’t be nearly six foot and yet he’s an excellent servant; quick and willing and conscientious. It would be very wrong to turn him off.’

‘Of course it would, dear. Don’t worry, just leave everything to me. You see, I so much want things to be perfect at Mersham and - Good gracious, what’s that?’

‘That’ was an enormous tea-cosy which had just flown out of the first floor window of a cottage built into the stable block, narrowly missing a bed of petunias. It was followed by a strange whooping noise and a shower of spoons, clattering on to the cobbles at their feet.

Muriel, looking with horror at Rupert, was surprised to see him smile like a child experiencing a familiar but long-forgotten treat.

‘It’s Mrs Proom! My goodness, that takes me back! We ought to go and see her, Muriel, she’ll be so pleased.’

‘Mrs Proom? You mean your butler’s wife?’

Rupert shook his head. ‘His mother. She must be well over ninety. She was a very active woman once and now she’s bedridden. It makes her a little fractious sometimes and then she throws things.’

Muriel frowned. Mad old women who threw things were no part of her plans for Mersham. But Rupert was already leading the way into the trim little cottage and she had perforce to follow him.

Mrs Proom was sitting up in bed, her lace cap askew, her little shrunken chest heaving angrily.

‘I’m bored,’ she said. ‘Where’s the Russian girl? Cyril said she was coming.’ The words were hardly decipherable because Mrs Proom, in deference to the weather Which was warm and sunny, had removed her teeth.

Rupert had walked over to the bed and taken her little brown-spotted hand in his. ‘Mrs Proom! How good to see you. Do you remember me?’

The change in the shrunken face was touching. ‘Master Rupert,’ she mumbled. ‘His lordship, I should say, and me without my teeth.’

‘I’ve brought my fiancee to see you,’ said Rupert, smiling warmly down at her. This is Miss Hardwicke.’

Muriel came forward, ready to be gracious.

‘My, what a beauty!’ said the old lady. ‘Cyril said as how you was good-looking, but you’re lovelier than a queen.’

‘Thank you,’ said Muriel, smiling charmingly at the old lady.

But as they were leaving, Mrs Proom turned querulous again. ‘I want the tweeny,’ she said. ‘Anna, she was called. She’s telh’ng me about the Bolshies. I like fine to hear about the Bolshies.’

‘I’ll pass on the message,’ promised Rupert. ‘I’m sure she’ll be here soon.’

‘I don’t want her soon,’ said Mrs Proom. ‘I want her now.’

-
-
-
-*

It was as they were strolling along the lake that Rupert was reminded of a practical matter he’d meant to mention to his betrothed. ‘Muriel, after we’re married, I wonder if you’d look into the business of bathrooms for the top floor. The servants’ attics. There don’t seem to be any at all.’

‘Don’t they have ewers and basins?’ asked Muriel, surprised.

‘Well, yes. But some of them seem to feel they’d like something more. Housework is a pretty dirty business after all.’

‘Rupert, none of your servants are socialists, I hope?’

‘Good heavens no, I shouldn’t think so. I mean, I haven’t asked. Surely you don’t have to be a socialist to want to have a bath?’

‘It often goes together,’ said Muriel sagely.

Rupert did not pursue the matter. Three o’clock had just struck and it was time to go and meet his groom.

‘Muriel,’ he said, his face alight, ‘we have to turn back now. I’ve got something to show you… a surprise.’

-
-
-
-*

An hour later, Anna, passing the stables on her way to visit Mrs Proom, came upon the Earl of Westerholme standing alone by Saturn’s loose box, stroking his old hunter’s neck. She would have gone past, but something about his expression, a look of weariness, made her hesitate.

‘Don’t,’ he said as she halted. ‘I forbid it.’

‘Don’t what,’ said Anna, startled.

‘Don’t curtsy. I’ve had a hard afternoon and I can’t stand it.’

Anna was indignant. ‘But I am a maid, my lord! And in Selina Strickland—’

‘And don’t speak to me about Selina Strickland either. I have developed a profound dislike of Selina Strickland. Come here, I want to show you something.’

Anna came. The earl walked down the long line of loose boxes, most of them empty now, and drew back the bolt of a door at the end.

‘Oh! said Anna. ‘She has come!’

‘Potter told you I was buying a mare for Miss Hardwicke?’

‘Yes.’ Anna could not take her eyes off the mare as she pranced and cavorted, shy yet trusting, white as snow with the narrow head and marvellously held neck of the true Arab. ‘She’s like Mr Cameron’s new rose.’

‘And, like Mr Cameron’s new rose, she needs a name.’

Anna was stroking the velvet muzzle now, apologizing tenderly for her sugarless state … modulating, as the mare grew more affectionate, into her own language. That damnable language, thought Rupert, that turns everything into poetry - and catching one word, he said: ‘Doushaf That means “soul” doesn’t it?’

‘Yes. But it is also what you call people you love. We say “my soul” like you say “my darling” or “my dearest”.’ She looked up to give him one of her sudden, life-enhancing grins. ‘We are very interested in souls in Russia.’

‘So I understand.’ Rupert let his long fingers run through the mare’s silken mane. ‘Shall I call you Dousha?’ he asked her. Then. ‘But after all, I shall not call her anything. I’m going to sell her again,’ he added, trying to keep his voice light.

‘Oh no!’ Anna’s face was puckered in despair. ‘Why?’

‘Miss Hardwicke doesn’t ride. I knew that. But I thought she would want to learn. That’s why I chose the mare, for her gentleness. The bridegroom’s present for the bride. Silly of me. Muriel wants sapphires.’

The bleakness in his eyes, contrasting with the light voice, was too much for Anna, who buried her face in the horse’s neck.

‘Do you ride?’ Rupert asked suddenly, and watched -his depression lifting - the expressions chase across her face as she decided whether or not to lie.

‘Everyone rides in Russia,’ she compromised at last.

‘Of course,’ he agreed gravely. ‘Particularly the housemaids. Oh, God, I wish I could . . , but really I can’t. It wouldn’t do.’

Anna was wise enough to ignore this. Instead, seemingly at random, she said: ‘Have you heard of the Heavenly Horses of Ferghana?’

Rupert caught his breath.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have heard of them. And of the Emperor Wu-Ti who sought them all his life because he believed they would carry his soul to heaven.’

It had grown very quiet in the stable. Only the mare’s gentle whickering broke the silence.

‘She is one of them, I think,’ said the girl softly. ‘One of the brave ones who gallop till they sweat blood.’

‘Perhaps I could send her home,’ mused Rupert, ‘to browse on fields of alfalfa in an emerald valley watered by crystal streams from the Pamirs …’

‘Until the servants of the emperor come to harness her to the Chariot of Immortality—’

‘And she gallops off into the sky bound for the Land of Perpetual Peace.’

For a while neither of them spoke. Then he said: ‘It was my dream once, to go out there. To Afghanistan or further and bring back some of those horses. There’s a strain there still…’

‘It was a good dream,’ said Anna quietly.

‘No. Not now, not any more.’

‘But yes\ One must hold on to dreams. My cousin Sergei was like you - all through the fighting, while he could still get letters, he wrote of the splendid horses he would breed when there was peace again.’

Rupert turned to her, his own troubles set aside. ‘Ah, yes, Uncle Sebastien told me how happy you were that he was safe. Do you have any news of him?’

Anna nodded. ‘I had a letter yesterday from my mother. He has become chauffeur to a very rich and important duchess!’

‘That sounds promising.’

Anna gave a theatrical sigh. ‘I’m afraid it will end badly,’ she said. ‘You see, the duchess has five daughters and Sergei is very beautiful!’

‘Lucky Sergei!’ said Rupert, smiling down at her.

And, relieved to have paddled back into the shallows, he led his housemaid from the stables.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Fortman and Bittlestone’s reputation as ‘England’s Premier Department Store’ rests on a number of specialities. On the food halls, where bowler-hatted gentlemen’s gentlemen may be seen of a morning prodding their way through a selection of exotic cheeses; on the jewellery department where maharajahs have not scorned to pick up a trinket to take back to their palaces in Rawalpindi or Lahore; on the restaurant where, in a decor resembling the bathrooms of the Topkapi Palace, ancient duchesses consume English mutton at prices so astronomical that it stills all possible criticism of the food.

But above all, on its bridal department. For over a hundred years, Fortman and Bittlestone have been making wedding dresses for the e’lite of Britain. Conveniently situated for bridesmaids’ lunches at the Ritz, there was hardly a morning when a bevy of brides and their attendants did not take possession of the opulent fitting rooms with their oyster-silk booths and draped curtains, their ankle-deep carpets and obsequious sewing girls. For here was the end of the road for those girls who, having safely weathered the storm-tossed agitations of ‘The Season’, came matrimonially to rest.

And here, at twelve noon just four weeks before the wedding, Muriel Hardwicke had arranged to meet her bridesmaids: Miss Cynthia Smythe, The Lady Lavinia Nettleford - and Ollie Byrne.

For Ollie, the proposed expedition to London was a source of desperate excitement. Not only was she to meet Muriel at last and try on The Dress, but she was also to join the two grown-up bridesmaids afterwards at the luncheon that Tom Byrne, as best man, was giving them at the Ritz. And to complete the glory of this day, Tom himself was going to drive her up to town.

Rupert, proposing to escort Muriel by train, was less enthusiastic. He had hoped to spend the day catching up on the business of the estate but, in her quiet way, Muriel had been insistent about the purchase of her sapphires, and sapphires were not to be found in Maidens Over, the local market town.