A Dark and Distant Shore (104 page)

The candles were shaded, and there was a local woman sitting quietly in the corner, knitting. When Juliana smiled at her, she rose and left them alone.

Magnus’s eyes were closed and his breathing was erratic. There was a faint, medicinal smell in the room, half drowned by the tang of wood smoke, but not quite masking the smell of old age. After a moment, Juliana leaned over and took her father’s hand. It was cold, and automatically she began chafing it. ‘Father!’ she said in a low voice.

He opened his eyes as if it required a great effort. There was an unseeing look about them. ‘Juley?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Are you all right?’ His voice was faint and jerky.

‘What a question! That’s what I’m supposed to ask
you
!’
But he had never responded to the light touch, and she quickly retrieved her error. ‘Yes, Papa. I’m all right, I assure you.’

‘That fever...’

‘It comes and goes. I must learn to live with it. It’s called malaria.’

‘That terrible place. Should never have gone. All your stepmother’s fault.’

A choking cough shook him, and she said, ‘You mustn’t talk.’ But even on his death-bed Magnus wouldn’t have any truck with all that forgiving and forgetting nonsense. ‘
She
encouraged you. Quite incredible. Always knew it was wrong. Graveyard of the British...’

‘Yes, Papa. But it’s all over now, and you mustn’t worry.’

He had closed his eyes, but now they opened again as if the lids were on springs. ‘
Mustn’t worry
?’
he echoed strongly. ‘How can I help but worry. If I only knew you were properly settled!’

She wondered if his memory was failing. ‘I
am
settled, remember? Theo and I have a beautiful house, and we are very comfortable, and do very well.’

‘Not enough. Children. Son to inherit Kinveil.’ Suddenly, he was a picture of decrepitude. ‘Should have started a family as soon as you were married. I don’t hold with this putting off. How’s a fellow expected to die in peace if his own daughter won’t do as she ought. It worries me, you know.’ He looked as if all the world was conspiring against him.

She began chafing his hand again, gazing back into the eyes that were now an indeterminate buff colour under the pale lids. Such a comfortable death-bed. A warm, handsome room, soft pillows, a doctor, nurse, wife and daughter all dedicated solely to him, and any number of others waiting in the wings to provide whatever he needed or required. She remembered the cramped little cabin on the
Himalaya
at Calcutta, and the other death-beds in the filthy, vermin-ridden, evil-smelling underground room in the Begum Kothi. And one other, on the hard ground.

She had been useless then. But perhaps she could do something now, when all it needed was a few words, a few lies. ‘It’s a secret still,’ she said, making a great show of whispering. ‘I was saving it until you were better. But if you are truly anxious... Well, you needn’t be. There is going to be a child, and I am sure it must be a son.’

Slowly, his eyes filled with tears, and he sniffed gustily as they rolled down his cheeks.

She said, ‘But don’t you dare tell anyone! Promise?’

‘Don’t want them all fussing?’

‘That’s right. Not for a while yet, anyway.’

‘Very wise. Can’t stand people fussing, myself, and they
will
do it. Incredible!’ He blinked, and gave another painful, tight little cough. ‘Um – er – will you call him – er – Luke?’

She swallowed. ‘Luke Magnus, I thought. Every boy needs two Christian names.’

Another pair of fat, comfortable tears rolled down his cheeks.

‘Well, anyway,’ she said. ‘I’ve set your mind at rest, haven’t I? No need to worry any more.’

‘No need to worry,’ he repeated, his breath rasping. ‘That’s a good girl.’

He said nothing more after that, but it seemed as if his muscles had eased, and his breathing became quieter. He was very white, and his hand was very cold.

She sat there for an hour or more. She could see he was still breathing, and he gripped her hand with surprising power as if he were afraid she would go away, but she knew that soon the faint sound from his lips and the almost invisible movement of his chest would stop.

She knew that she couldn’t bear to stay for it.

He mumbled as she freed her hand from his and quietly rose and went to the door. Vilia and the woman from the village were just outside, and Juliana said, ‘I think you should go in.’

For most of the night, she sat staring into the fire. She had lied to help him, but by leaving she had failed him. He had wanted her to stay with him, she knew. And now there was yet another failure to add to the tally of her dead.

‘What could be more discouraging?’ Gideon asked, surveying the luncheon table with disfavour. ‘Here am I, back on English soil for the first time in eight years, and is the family drawn up in serried ranks, panting to clasp me to its collective bosom? Is it, I ask you? No. In fact, everyone seems to have done a disappearing trick. Afraid, no doubt,’ he went on dispassionately, helping himself to a large slice of game pie, ‘of being blinded by the light of my countenance, or suffocated by Eastern wisdom and patchouli.’

Amy Lauriston chuckled, and her husband grinned at her. ‘It’s perfectly true,’ he said. ‘They’ve all vanished, every last one of them.’ He didn’t mind for himself, but he thought that for Amy’s sake someone might have had the decency to stay and utter a word of welcome.

She said, ‘They can’t have. Pass your plate and I’ll give you some of this salad. Now be serious, and tell me. Are all the houses closed up?’

‘Yes. Vilia’s at Kinveil, which is only to be expected at this time of year. But the house in Belgrave Square – that’s Theo and Juliana’s – looks as if it’s been closed up for weeks, and as far as I can see the Barbers’ place is as empty as if they’ve moved out altogether. I thought young Peregrine James would be able to tell me what was going on. But no. The man who owns the house where he has his apartment said he understood Mr Lauriston was in Scotland for some weeks, and I almost had to tear the address out of him by force. Marchfield, of course, but I can’t imagine why he was so reluctant to tell me. I don’t look like a debt collector, do I?’

‘Ummm,’ she said consideringly. ‘I have no notion of what English debt collectors look like, of course, but I shouldn’t think so. But he might have thought you were a foreigner, and that would be even worse!’ Gideon’s silky beard and thickly waving white hair made an exotic contrast with his tanned skin and still youthful face, and indeed, on that dreadful evening outside Shanghai when he had rescued her from the Taiping vedettes, she herself had taken him for French. His looks aside, she had never come across a Britisher who had gone to the trouble of learning to speak Mandarin, far less its Nankingese version. She admired and loved her husband very deeply in her own quiet way.

His lean face creased with amusement. ‘Take care what you say, my girl! It’s not for a New Englander to criticize John Bull’s prejudices. Anyway, at least Lavinia is still in town. She was out when I called, but I’ve left a message.’

‘How very daring of you! I thought her name had been obliterated from the family tree?’

‘Only the
Telfer
family tree!’

Lavinia swept into their hotel suite in thin, vivid, stylish person, not two hours later, and hugged Gideon with the greatest vigour. ‘How good it is to see you again! Yes, I know you said you would call this evening, but we are going out and, anyway, I couldn’t wait. Oh, I’m so sorry. You must be Amy. Please forgive me for not seeing you at first, but having Gideon back is like having sanity restored to a mad world.’

Sinking into a chair, and chattering briskly to Gideon about her own affairs as the easiest way of covering the first awkward moments, she covertly surveyed Amy, half a dozen years older than herself, and, she supposed, about fifteen years younger than Gideon. The difference wasn’t particularly marked, because Gideon’s white hair was completely belied by his eyes, a little tired but still full of youthful charm. Lavinia had always considered it grossly unfair for a man to have such eyes,
and
such eyelashes. Amy was a surprise – not at all dashing, as one would have expected of a young woman who had lived in China, and been captured by rebels, and goodness knew what else. She was quite tall, and the high-necked, fitted bodice of her glacé tartan gown – dark blue and white, with a fine scarlet line through it – hinted at an elegantly curved figure. But although she had a mass of glossy hair wound into a long, oval chignon that stretched from the top of her head to the nape of her neck, it was an unremarkable dark mouse colour. Her nose was unfashionably hooked, and her brows straight and heavy. On the other hand, there were dimples at the corners of her mouth, and her blue-grey eyes looked kind and understanding. They were also perceptive, and Lavinia made a mental note not to underestimate Aunt Amy. ‘Must I call you aunt?’ she exclaimed. ‘It seems so silly, when we’re almost of an age – and I’ve never called Gideon uncle!’

‘I should hope not,’ Gideon said, outraged. ‘What’s more, that brat of yours would be calling me “Great-uncle” is no time at all, and I won’t have it! I’m sure Amy feels the same.’

The dimples at the corners of Amy’s mouth deepened. ‘And that, you see, disposes of any opinions I might have on the subject! The master has spoken. Amy it shall be.’

‘Good heavens, Gideon! That sounds as if Amy has a mind of her own!’

He grinned. Stretching luxuriously, he sank his hands into the pockets of his trousers and said, ‘God, it’s good to be home. And now, young woman, perhaps you’ll tell me what’s happened to the rest of the family? Why this unanimous flight from the metropolis?’

‘Unanimous? You don’t mean to tell me Peregrine James has gone, too? Well, really! It gets more like musical chairs every day. You know everyone’s moving house, of course, and...’

‘I don’t know any such thing. I’m at least six months out of date. We haven’t heard anything since Shanghai, and even
that
news had taken a couple of months to reach us. We’ve been on the high seas for the last one hundred and seven days.’

‘How very precise of you! Did you count?’

‘Didn’t have to,’ Gideon replied laconically. ‘Everyone else did it for us. We came back on one of the tea clippers from Foochow, racing another one all the way. We won. Of course.’

There was a tap on the door, and Amy said melodiously, ‘Ah, the tea!’

Her husband sat up. ‘No, really, Amy!’ and then, surveying the trays, sank back with a sigh of relief. ‘You’re a wicked woman. I thought you meant it.’

Amy giggled. ‘Tea for you, Lavinia, but neither of us ever wants to see the stuff again. Coffee or chocolate, Gideon?’

Lavinia decided she liked Amy. ‘You mustn’t allow Vilia to intimidate you,’ she said suddenly.

Gideon gave a choke of laughter. ‘She’s not easy to intimidate!’

Amy was a splendid woman, and not a day passed without him thanking God he had met her. The pain of losing Juliana had faded by then into a dull, empty ache, but even though he had scorned himself for making a grand tragedy out of it, he had been convinced that he would never be freed from the depression that dogged him. And yet somehow Amy had managed it, without even knowing its cause. Except when she landed herself in idiotic scrapes by behaving as if the world were a rational place, when it wasn’t – which was what had happened in the Taiping episode – she was extremely intelligent and had a quiet mischief that had attracted him almost against his will. He knew that she had emerged from school in Boston a perfect specimen of New England womanhood, annihilatingly correct, exquisitely polished, completely purified of any taint of unconventionality; an impeccable wife for even the most discriminating gentleman. But since Europe in 1848 was no place for a young lady to round off her education, she had been sent to her aunt and uncle in China, instead, and had liked it so much that she had stayed. In no time at all, she had stopped being a perfect specimen of New England womanhood and become a real and positive person, with views of her own and no hesitation about expressing them. She had been a sore trial to her aunt and uncle, who had been embarrassingly ready to relinquish her to the foreign correspondent of the
Times-Graphic.
Amy, perfectly aware of it, had chuckled about it for weeks. She had a delightful chuckle. Gideon wasn’t in love with her, for his heart would always be Juliana’s, but his affection for her went very deep, and their relationship had an uncomplicated warmth and harmony that was quite new in his experience.

He said, ‘Anyway, she’s been warned, not only about Vilia but everyone else! So come on, girl, let me have all the news!’

There was a good deal of it. The Barbers were going to live at Glenbraddan, to keep Edward company – Grace, Isa, five little girls, one infant philosopher, and Ian, although Ian was involved in the campaign for the Second Reform Bill and proposed keeping a base in London. Jermyn’s wife Bella had died giving birth to a second daughter early the previous year. Gideon knew that, but he didn’t know that Jermyn had married again. ‘Well, you know what he’s like,’ Lavinia said. ‘Vilia was pestering him to marry again, and he’ll do anything to be left in peace with his boring old guns. So he promptly married Madge.
Not
a doormat like Bella – far from it! The most enterprising girl. She was an actress on tour in Edinburgh with her own company, and the peculiar thing is that I think she and Jermyn are really in love!’

‘Well, it does happen,’ Gideon said. ‘Can she act?’

‘I don’t know, but Mr Dickens gave her a very good notice.’

‘Oh, dear!’ he said with a sepulchral groan. ‘And?’

Lavinia glared at him. ‘And she is – she is in an interesting condition.’

‘When?’

‘October. Won’t it be marvellous if it’s a boy? Vilia will be so pleased. Oh, and after mother’s seen Madge through the next few months, she’s going to leave Marchfield to Jermyn and her, and go to live with Vilia at Kinveil. Yes, truly! It was mother’s idea, but Vilia doesn’t seem to mind.’