An Accomplished Woman (3 page)

‘Oh, Lord,’ Lydia heard
herself wail. The decanter made eyes at her again.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing, nothing,
George . . . Won’t you have a glass?’

‘Is that a way of saying
you’re having another?’

‘I do love it when
you’re moral.’ She poured for two. ‘George, it’s the ribbons.’

‘My dear Lyddie,’ he
said, with the practised promptness of a five-years-married man, glancing over
her dress, ‘they look very pretty.’

‘Not that. Those. For
heaven’s sake, I’m not wearing any. It’s that ridiculous slang. It means, I
suppose, he can drive a horse well — or two horses — something to do with the
reins, at any rate—’

‘Good hand at the
ribbons, yes,’ said George, perseveringly. ‘I don’t think, in truth, that I’ve
ever seen a better.’

‘But why should it
matter? Why should anyone care about the— the ribbons, and the hands, and all
of that?’

George came over and took
his glass of wine, studying her judiciously, dubiously. ‘Plenty of girls do.’

‘I’m not plenty of
girls. I’m not even one girl. I’m a woman, a rational human creature with a
thinking mind . . .’ She saw, without wanting to see, her brother’s look of
mild boredom. Off she goes again. ‘And as for this good ribbons — with the
hands— thing—’

‘Hand,’ said George,
encouragingly. ‘Good hand at the ribbons.’

‘Yes. That.’ Lydia
hesitated, caught up by a sort of despondent warmth. She liked him very much, and
also — a different thing, or different in its effects — loved him. ‘You know,
George, I cannot fall in love to order with a man you approve of, no matter
what qualities you think he — no matter what qualities he possesses. I hope Mr
Sissons very soon forgets this nonsense, and lives happily. And I’m flattered
you should take this trouble over me. But please, no more of it. Else I shall
begin to suspect you of wanting to be rid of me.’

‘Bless you, no. I see
that I’ve been a blundering fellow over the whole business.’ George swallowed
another glass of canary. ‘This will sound miserably sanctimonious, I fear, but
the fact is I simply want you to have what I have.’

Thinking of Susannah,
Lydia said carefully: ‘Not everyone is so fortunate in their choice.’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve been very
lucky. But that doesn’t mean you mightn’t be likewise, if you were to . . .’

‘To be a little more of
the husband-hunter?’ She smiled. ‘I’m quite happy as a single woman, George. I
fancy that the urge to matrimony manifests itself as a feeling of vacancy —
that there appears something missing or lacking; but I am conscious of no such
lack in myself, and do not feel the need to be completed by a husband, like the
third volume of a novel.’

‘Now that’s very like
you, to compare yourself to a book,’ he said, smiling too. ‘Well, you know
best. I’ve no head for philosophy myself. But what I
can
see, and it is
monstrous unjust but true nonetheless, is how women are prized for their youth
in a way that is never applied to we men. As far as eligibility goes, there is
little distinction made between a man of five-and-twenty and a man of forty, so
long as he has sense and teeth. But for a woman, alas, it is no such matter.’

‘My dear brother, you
are very delicately alluding to the fact that just before I came here in March
I passed my thirtieth birthday; an event that the world views less as a matter
for celebration than condolence. At least for women, as you justly remark.’

‘I’ll tell you this,’
George said, with sudden hot gallantry, ‘you could pass for three-and-twenty
anywhere.’

‘Thank you: I doubt it
is true, but I am not displeased to hear it. There, I am not so very unnatural
after all. But I assure you I have no consciousness of time running out — and
no feeling of discontent. Reading, and writing, and music, and drawing, and
helping Papa in his studies — all these make an ample sum for a woman of my
tastes and inclinations. A woman, by the by, who knows her own good fortune.
With ten thousand pounds I need not fear governessing or seamstressing, and I
am equally safe from fortune-hunters. My portion will secure me a modest
independence, at least. So you see there is no need—’

‘Oh, Lord, Lyddie, you
must know that when Father dies — perish the thought — you will always be
assured of a place at Heystead. I should be miserable if you could ever suppose
anything else; and so would Susannah.’

Lydia had her own ideas
about what would make Susannah miserable, but she kept them in. ‘Well, in whatever
way, I need not fear poverty or dependence — and it is the fear of those which
often stampedes a woman into marriage, so that she hardly knows she is in
before the gate swings shut behind her.’

‘Loneliness, though,’
George suggested quietly. ‘What about loneliness?’ A sound from the street made
him cross to the window. ‘Is that—? Oh. Thought it might be Susannah.’ The
spring-afternoon light, turning cool and meagre, stamped his strong blond head
and hearty profile with a sad, exposed look. He could not be long without his
wife. Consciousness of this, and of her own difference, made Lydia grope for
something — some sort of amends.

‘I have never been
lonely, or understood loneliness, but then I have never really been tested,’
she said, ‘so I should perhaps not make a boast of it. And I do not declare
that I have no intention of marrying on any general principle. If I were to see
the right man, no doubt I should eat my words with a ready appetite. The simple
fact is, I have never seen him yet, and at the age of thirty, reason inclines
me rather to conclude that he does not exist, than to persist in the belief
that he is still somewhere to be found.’

George turned and shook
himself genially. ‘Well, I shall never understand women,’ he said, meaning her.
‘Oh, I don’t doubt you’re in earnest. You turned down Lewis Durrant, after all,
which no one can understand to this day.’

‘If people are still
troubling themselves over such an unimportant matter, eight or nine years after
the trifling event, they assuredly have little to think of.’ Trying to keep her
voice light, she detected in it a mosquito’s pointed whine.

‘Well, that’s how people
are,’ George said, maddeningly amiable. ‘I’ve never understood it myself, but
never mind. How does Mr Durrant, by the by? I ask for a particular reason, as
I—’

‘When Mr Durrant
proposed to me,’ Lydia said, ignoring this, ‘he had taken a good, careful,
lofty look about him, and decided I would suit his matrimonial purposes
admirably. And when I dared to raise the question of whether
he
would
suit me, he retreated into mortified pride. That is the whole story, as you
well know. I did try my best to blush, giggle, and swoon in bashful rapture at
this mark of attention from such an eligible gentleman, but I was unequal to
the task. I don’t swoon well, George.’

‘I know that,’ he said,
with a jaunty look. ‘In fact, thinking on it now, I don’t believe it would have
answered, for Durrant’s a stiff-necked fellow after all, and you . . .’ He
swallowed what he was about to say. ‘What was I — oh, yes. I saw Hugh Hanley
the other day. Quite the young buck still. And now it seems he’s not content
with the militia. He’s after purchasing a commission in the Regulars. The
Prince of Wales’s Own, he said to me.’

‘He can’t,’ said Lydia.
‘That would cost . . . the expense—’

‘I know,’ George said
soberly. ‘After he told me, I asked some fellows I know, who are well up in
these things: and I am assured that a cornetcy in the Tenth Light Dragoons is
not to be had for less than seven hundred pounds. Add three hundred to that for
the uniform, and then there’s the cost of your horse and stabling. But he’s
raising the money on his expectations, you see. Hanley’s his uncle’s heir,
after all, and he can get any amount of credit on the strength of that. Lewis
Durrant’s no dotard, of course, but then he can’t live for ever either, and he
must be seven-and-thirty now—’

‘Eight. Eight-and-thirty
in January.’

‘And no other heir for
Culverton. Well, unless Durrant decides to leave it all to the Society for the
Reformation of Manners.’

‘Unlikely, I think,’
Lydia said, with a half-smile.

‘Sour as ever, is he?’

‘A good deal sourer.
Lately he got cross with Lord Brownlow. There was a county meeting, to do with
voluntary contributions for the internal defence of the county in case of a
French invasion —
or
riots and disturbances. Mr Durrant, it seems, stood
up and opposed the resolution because of the latter part. Treating our
fellow-countrymen as if they were enemies, he said, was precisely the way to
turn them into Jacobins, and small wonder if they ended up setting a guillotine
in Lincoln market. Apparently Lord Brownlow, who was in the chair, took it very
ill.’

‘Dear, dear, that was
unwise. Wasn’t there some rumour once of Durrant being made deputy lieutenant
of the county?’

‘If it was ever a
possibility, it is not now.’

‘Mind, you would agree,
of course, with his radical notions,’ George said playfully.

‘I concur with the
sentiment,’ Lydia said, refusing to rise. ‘But in this case I think it rather a
pose on Mr Durrant’s part. He has many qualities; but the fact is, he cannot
drink a dish of tea without making it appear a gesture of stubborn
independence.’

‘Well, he’ll be sourer
still when he hears his nephew is already spending his inheritance. Ah . . .!’
Below, the sound of the front door. Halfway across the room George paused,
sheepish. ‘Oh — excuse me, Lyddie—’

‘Go, go.’ She laughed.
His absence would give her a little space to fortify herself against Susannah
with another glass of wine.

The children were the
first upstairs. Lydia submitted contentedly enough to the flinging, shouting
and knee-scrambling. She was very fond of her nephew and niece, little George
and Lucy, and they of her: she did not pretend to understand them in the least,
which they seemed to like. Next came Susannah, singing under her breath. A very
blooming young woman, Susannah Templeton; and if the bloom was of a sort to
make Lydia wish for a sharp frost, then the fault surely lay with Lydia.

‘Where did you go on
your walk then, my dears?’ George asked, swinging his son up to the ceiling.

‘What a question!’
gurgled Susannah. ‘I do believe we went to a fairy kingdom at last, quite
without meaning to! Oh, we intended
at first
to go to Cavendish Square,
but it is so very dull to follow intentions, and so we took another way
entirely — simply because the sky was so blue!’

Susannah did not so much
sit down as demonstrate sitting-down’s beautiful possibilities. From the sofa,
all full breasts and flowing muslin, she beamed at her children and her life.
Her face was that of an exceptionally pretty and well-made doll transmuted into
blissful flesh. It was always difficult for Lydia to remember quite how much
she hated all this, sum and parts: it was like a megrim headache — only getting
one reminded you of how horrible it was.

‘George, you look
tired,’ Susannah fluted. ‘Was it very hard at Craven Street today?’

‘Oh! not excessively.
Just a little fagging.’ George was a sort of partner in a banking firm off the
Strand, set up by a friend from Oxford. The friend did most of the work as a
banker, because he liked it and it suited him; George meanwhile went
conscientiously to Craven Street for a few hours each day and sat reading the
newspaper. Yet he liked to have Susannah make a great cherishing fuss of him
before dinner. Though an intelligent man, he hankered after the easy comfort of
the stupid, which Susannah, a great puller-off of boots and stroker of brows,
was very ready to supply.

Just then little Lucy,
trying to imitate her brother, launched herself off Lydia’s knee and fell on
her face. Lydia jumped up, prepared to soothe, but Susannah was there before
her. Splendidly regardless of her gown she scooted along the floor to seize and
embrace, leaving Lydia to stand redundantly over them.

‘There — never mind —
the fairies will come and take the horrid hurt away,’ Susannah crooned. Then,
turning her lovely guileless face round at Lydia: ‘Lord, look at you up there.
Aunt Lydia’s like a giant, isn’t she? Right up to the sky!’

Lydia was — yes — quite
tall. Susannah was, inevitably, of medium height, meaning just the right height
for gazing up with trustful adoration into a man’s face. On the mantelshelf,
easily within Lydia’s Amazonian reach, was a statuette of a horseman in bronze,
as invitingly grippable as a hammer. But just then George saved his wife’s life
by announcing: ‘Well, I’m ready for dinner.’

Dressing in her room,
Lydia examined her own excessive irritation with her sister-in-law — and found
underneath it the figure of Mr Cribs-Sissons. Yes: Susannah brushing her
lustrous hair at the dressing-table before bed and remarking to George what a
very good thing it would be for Lydia to marry his friend — she is after all
thirty now . . . Wretched presumption! Was it so very tiresome entertaining her
here for a couple of months of every year? It had been George’s insistence,
when he first married and took a house in town, that Lydia come and spend a
part of every winter season with them. So she had, and relished it — her
delicious annual infusions of theatre, concerts, opera, exhibitions,
reading-rooms, bookshops. But now, looking back, she saw her visits in a
different light. Had there been, each time, a hopeful humming in the air of
Queen Anne Street — that this time they would get her married off — and each
time an equivalent disappointment?