A Song Twice Over (33 page)

No choice at all.

‘Are they –
well
, Mrs Thackray?' He knew she was watching him very keenly.

‘Marvellously well, I'd say. Never better.'

‘And Miss Adeane lives over her shop, does she?'

‘Aye. She finds it more convenient, I reckon – for her visitors.'

‘Mother.' Luke Thackray's warning served only to increase the sarcasm in his mother's face.

‘I'm telling no secrets, Luke lad. You'll not be denying what everybody knows for certain?'

He put down his knife and fork tidily, his rough-hewn, overcrowded face completely calm.

‘No. But I won't be judging either, mother.'

‘Then I reckon it's high time you did. Where Miss Cara Adeane's concerned, at any rate.'

He shook his head, unperturbed it seemed, not in the least put out yet altogether immovable, a man whose quiet strength struck Daniel suddenly as impressive, a steadily burning, dogged persistence which would be likely to endure far longer than his own vivid bursts of fire.

‘She does the best she can, mother. And, considering the alternatives,
I'm
not much inclined to blame her.'

‘I've never seen her crying over her lot, Luke my lad – whatever we might choose to call it. Nor hanging her head with shame.'

He looked up at her, with a sudden, whole-hearted grin. ‘No mother. I reckon you never will.'

No more was said. Having finished his dinner the candidate retired to the spick and span little room no bigger than a cubbyhole they had placed at his disposal and, when he had put his thoughts and his speeches in good order, stepped out for a breath of air, a short stroll which led him – as he had known it would – to the newly painted door of Odette Adeane.

His memory of her had been indistinct, a little Frenchwoman speaking only in soft whispers, so frail and quiet and hesitant that she had seemed almost transparent beside Cara, hardly there at all. An old woman, anxious and harassed half to death, wearing some colourless kind of garment which had seemed to hang on her, fitting where it touched. Shabby, he'd thought, and plain, so that he was taken aback by the neatly-rounded woman who answered his knock, a most presentable person in a dark, well-cut woollen dress with what looked like a gold brooch at the neck, her smooth oval face miraculously ironed of the creases he remembered, her mouth smiling the serene welcome of a woman who has no reason to expect trouble from a knock at her door, a woman who eats well and sleeps well and can settle all her bills. A contented woman, subject to no alarm. Until she recognized him.

‘It is Mr Carey, isn't it?'

‘Yes, Mrs Adeane. May I speak to you?'

‘Of course.' For when had Odette ever resisted an appeal? ‘Do come in. Please do. Please be at ease.'

Although she was not at ease herself and did not expect to be until she had told him all the painful things he would surely wish to know. Until she had wounded him, perhaps. And then carried the news to Cara.

He no longer recognized the room into which she bade him enter, a bare place once furnished with the haphazard gleanings of pawnshops and charity, now beautified beyond anything in St Jude's by rugs and armchairs and a chintz-covered sofa, heavy red plush curtains at the window, a table with a fringed, red plush tablecloth to match, pictures on the walls, china ornaments, a good fire burning, something savoury and appetizing in the coal oven beside it.

The wages of sin, he supposed, trying to be glad, for Cara's sake, that they appeared to be so good.

No dog, he noticed, but Cara's son, the silent child who had always made him feel so ill at ease, still sitting by the hearth as if he had grown there from a morose three-year-old into a clean and tidy, almost dandified five. A handsome child, Cara's bold image, it seemed, with Odette's timid spirit, apparently engrossed in a book – or was he? – from which he did not lift his eyes.

‘Daniel,' said Odette, already faltering. ‘She is not here, you know.'

‘I know. I have come from the Thackrays.'

‘Oh yes …?' Her face was blank.

‘I am here for the by-election, Mrs Adeane. I shall be here for a little while. As the Chartist candidate. I thought you would have been gone, all three, long ago.'

‘And so we would, had she not …'

‘
I know
. Is she –
well
, Mrs Adeane?'

‘Oh yes.
Yes.
I am sure she is. She has the shop, you see. Nothing grand, as yet. Quite small, indeed – and there is still Miss Ernestine Baker across the street, making all the trouble she can. But Cara is so clever and she works so hard. She never stops working. It is all she thinks of. I supervise the workroom for her and keep the girls in order as best I can …'

‘Yes – to be sure.'

She smiled at him a little wildly, not knowing what to say except that it seemed best to keep on talking.

‘Yes indeed, because dressmakers can be very excitable, you know.
Someone
must keep them calm or the scissors soon start to fly. One wonders that murder is so seldom done. And I do the fine embroideries. And teach others, which I find very pleasant … I live here, with the child because … Well, it is not suitable for a child, is it, to be too much in a workroom among so many foolish women? He goes to school now, of course. She insists upon that. And then he comes home with me. She finds it convenient to live above the shop … Naturally one cannot leave business premises unattended. But the accommodation there is too small for the three of us …'

He was unprepared for the pain the room gave him, the fierce memory of the last time he had been here, when only that impulse of chivalry, or folly, had prevented him from taking her, as he could have done, from making her his own instead of handing her over to whoever had got her now. From forcing her, by an act of love, to follow him through the world, not barefoot as she'd accused him but in no great luxury, instead of ‘obliging'the man who had given her her chance. Was she happier this way? Through clenched teeth he hoped so. He had no right to do other than wish her well.

Yet it scorched him that he had been unable to give her that chance himself. Unable to give her anything but the bitter regret which struck out at him afresh, raising a sting of tears behind his eyes, an abominable tightness in his chest.

He must get out of this house and out of these memories as quickly as he could.

‘I am so sorry,' whispered Odette.

He could not answer her quite at once. It took a moment. And then, rapidly, he said, ‘I understand. I do realize … Mrs Adeane, there is someone – of course – who helped her – a man …'

‘Oh yes. I
am
so sorry.'

‘No. Please. Please don't distress yourself.'

‘My dear boy, it is
you
who are suffering …'

‘Yes.' Why hide it? She had seen it in any case and she was not Sairellen Thackray who would look down her granite nose at him and sneer. This gentle little lady would sit down and suffer at his side.

He could not bear that.

‘But I must bear it,' he said. ‘It is my own fault. And I have no right – none – to criticise. No rights of any kind. I want – I would be happy if you could tell her …'

‘Oh yes – anything …'

‘Just
that
. That I could not ever blame her. For anything. Could you tell her so in a manner she would tolerate?'

Odette shook her head and smiled sadly. ‘I will try.'

‘And should she wish to see me …?'

Her narrow, fluid hands came apart in a wide, pitying gesture which said ‘My poor boy. I do not think so.'

‘I cannot suppose she will. But I cannot hide my presence from her either, Mrs Adeane. I am here to make speeches and take part in processions. She will be bound to hear of me. Of course, why should she care? I cannot imagine she does.'

Odette had nothing to say to that.

‘But …'

‘Yes, Daniel?'

He drew himself up very straight. ‘If she would like me to call on her, then I will gladly do so. If not then I will do everything possible to keep out of her way. It is entirely for her to decide. Whatever is best for her.'

He meant it. He had given her nothing so far. Indeed, he had left her only in the full knowledge that he never could give her the things she wanted. He was ready, therefore, to submit to her wishes now whatever they may be. To make any sacrifice. At least he could give her that.

Odette had not meant to return to the shop in Market Square that evening yet, nevertheless, having given Liam his dinner and left him – happily for him – sketching railway engines with Luke Thackray, she did so, finding her daughter in the room at the back of the shop which served her as both office and sitting-room, going through the day's accounts.

Miss Cara Adeane. Dressmaker and Milliner. A handsome, elegant woman, thought her mother, although a
woman
of course, in no way a girl; twenty-two years old yet looking at least five years older, her gleaming hair drawn back into an intricate chignon which made her cheekbones higher and caused her brilliant turquoise eyes to slant upwards a little at their corners like the eyes of a sleek and haughty cat; her figure the most perfect in Frizingley, in Odette's opinion – and she had measured most of them – a tiny, supple waist, high, firm breasts, long legs, a thoroughbred arch to her back, the shoulders of a queenly Amazon.

A regal temper too, these days, imperious and unpredictable, working herself too hard, of course, and expecting the same of others, so that Odette spoke very carefully to her now as she described her interview with Daniel Carey.

But the storm did not come. It was not in Odette's nature to inflict pain without suffering it herself. Yet Cara listened to her now, looking remote, polite, her ledger still open before her, her pen in her hand, waiting, as if it had been a matter of a badly-cut bodice or a late delivery of thread, for the explanations to come to an end. And when they did she said calmly. ‘It's all right, mother.'

‘Darling – how can it be?'

‘It just
is
. So there's no need to talk about it again. And if you do happen to see him just tell him … to get on with what he has to do, and so will I. Which reminds me, I had Mrs Maria Colclough here today, just after you left. How about that? One of Miss Ernestine Baker's best customers asking
me
to make suggestions for her youngest daughter's wedding gown. And nervous as a cat about it too, in case Miss Ernestine had seen her slipping in here – as she probably had. I've made some sketches. So if you can do some samples of embroidery – by tomorrow afternoon – then I'll call on her. Because if we can get the Colclough wedding, mother …'

She pushed forward the sheet of paper on which she had developed, through several experimental stages, a gown intended to give Miss Rachel Colclough something between the allure of a white satin lily and the piety of a nun. The Colcloughs, as a family, being very religious but also very vain, requiring value which could be
seen
as value for every penny they spent yet without any blatant ostentation.

‘So we want a very simple embroidery pattern, mother. Some kind of biblical flower, if such a thing exists. You'll know – and
they'll
know – it's holy, if no one else does. But worked in tiny, tiny seed pearls, if I can persuade them to run to that. I expect I can. We have some pearl beads in the workroom so – since you're here – you might like to take them home and make a start tonight? I daren't put off seeing Mrs Colclough later than tomorrow afternoon because she's bound to have asked Ernestine Baker for sketches days before she plucked up enough courage to ask me. So I have to get over there quick and talk her out of whatever Baker has put forward, before they can finalize. I don't want fobbing off with a couple of extra evening-gowns for the honeymoon this time. So – now that I've got the wedding dress right, I'm going to sit up late and do my designs for the bridesmaids – make them look like lilies-of-the-valley to Rachel's arum lily if I can.
And
the going-away outfit. If I can deliver all that by tomorrow it ought to impress her, particularly if Baker has got no further than her everlasting tulle frills.'

But when Odette had taken the pearl beads and a few scraps of white satin and gone away, half-reassured, half-saddened by the apparently cool frame of her daughter's mind, the pencil soon fell from Cara's hand, a fit of restlessness driving her from her desk to the empty shop, upstairs to the workroom and then back to her desk again. She would eventually set to work on her sketches, having deliberately made much of them to Odette so as to give herself no choice in the matter. Her mother, who would certainly sit up late herself over those pearl beads, would expect to see Cara's ideas for the whole of the Colclough wedding procession tomorrow, including a hat of suitably discreet extravagance for the mother of the bride. Otherwise she would know that Cara had allowed her memories of Daniel Carey to distract her from what had become her way of life.

Her
chosen
way; chosen not entirely by herself but near enough, as close, she supposed, as she would ever come to it. And since she could not turn aside from it now, then what was to be gained by stirring up pain where there had been no pain? No joy either, of course, but a relatively inoffensive hollow space to which she had grown accustomed and had no desire to refill.

So she would do the sketches. And more than that, she would recover every drop of the excitement she had been feeling about the Colclough wedding, until Daniel – through Odette – had taken it away from her. Well – she would just get it back again. In a little while. She would go over every dirty little trick she intended to play on Miss Ernestine Baker, too. Would rehearse, with glee, every word of the honied malice she meant to pour into Maria Colclough's sharp but not incorruptible ear. Yes, she would do it all. Before the night was through. But, just now, she needed a moment. Just
time
, which could not always be counted on to heal, but which would certainly pass. At least one could rely on that. And sitting down in the red velvet armchair of which she was so proud, her dog snoring and snuffling his habitual evil-temper from the fur hearth-rug at her feet, she allowed the elegant arch of her back to admit its fatigue, her cheeks to acknowledge the ache of another full day of false smiles; allowed her eyes, which had missed nothing since early that morning, to close.