An Accomplished Woman (8 page)

He was, perhaps,
slightly bored with her, as she was with him. The result of understanding
without sympathy. They squeezed into the Rotunda, where to her intense
gratitude a string orchestra was playing: no singers. She had had enough of the
human voice. The
Allegro
was in B flat major, with a subsidiary theme in
the relative dominant. Because I know this, does it mean I don’t enjoy it? Head
not heart. Listening to those shimmering complex sounds, it seemed to her that
both were present. Surely that was the ideal. Surely one should not have to sacrifice
one for the other.

And surely she could
escape going to Bath. One simply said no — just as she had said no to Lewis
Durrant all those years ago: and then one lifted free, buoyed on the cool
current of decision, untrammelled by the cords of regret.

Heystead.’ Lydia sighed;
and settled herself back against the biscuit-thin upholstery of the post-chaise
as it skimmed out of the yard of the White Bear in Piccadilly. Which jarred her
spine and rattled her teeth: it was better to sit forward until you were off
the cobbles. No matter, though, because it was really Heystead that she was
leaning back against. Heystead, her cushion.

‘Heystead,’ said Mary
Darber. The way she uttered it suggested the dropping of a heavy stone into a
deep brackish well.

Mary was Lydia’s maid —
meaning she was a servant at Heystead, who always accompanied Lydia on her
annual visit to London because no respectable woman, not even one as
independent-minded as Lydia, could do such a thing quite alone. As Lydia
required very little fussing about hair or dress, there was not much for Mary
to do during the two-month sojourn at Queen Anne Street: so she passed the time
by falling in love. Being young and startlingly handsome, she had no difficulty
in accomplishing this each year. The tender victim this time was, Lydia
understood, a bookbinder’s apprentice from nearby Bentinck Street.

‘You’re sorry to be
going home, Mary?’

Listlessly Mary examined
her fingernails. ‘Oh, I shall get used to it.’

These loves were intense,
difficult, stirring. Too stirring, Lydia had feared at first, and kept an eye
on Mary’s waistline: but the girl seemed to know what she was about. And hints
that the family might help her to a job in London, rather than break her
romance, had been indifferently received. The parting, Lydia began to see, was
the thing. Two months of the year were consecrated to passion: the rest of the
time Mary was rational and comfortable. It seemed to Lydia a sensible solution.
There was only the painful transition from one state to another, from town to
country, to be got over. London made Mary very smart and quick in her manner.
‘Lord, ma’am, only look at that,’ she cried, rousing herself to stare out of
the window as they waited at the Islington turnpike. ‘Did you ever see such a
frightful old dowd? Surely no one has worn their hair dressed high like that
these fifteen years. Not in town, at least.’ She sank back with another sigh,
expressive of her reminded doom: return to the rustic world where dowds and frights
were in the majority. Lydia patiently commiserated. Usually Mary began to
recover by Hatfield: at Baldock or Biggleswade she would eat with a country
appetite, and by Eaton she would be remarking with interest on the state of the
crops.

Which, Lydia could see,
was poor. After the coldest winter in memory 1799 could come up with only a
damp, laggard spring. Distress was still hovering over the country and
agitating the nerves of propertied gentlemen who feared an English Bastille;
though the invasion scare of last year was gone, and the victory of the Nile
had raised hopes that the war could be won, or at least not so persistently
lost.

Lydia ardently wished it
over because it would stop men being killed, because it would put an end to the
tiresome military fashions, and because she longed to go abroad again. She had
visited Paris with her father just before the Revolution, been entranced, and
had hoped for a present return. Ten years was a long time to nurture a hope,
but she had done so: knowing, however, that lately she kept the spindly thing
alive only by ignoring her father’s declining vigour. Doubtless if the
Continent opened again he would put his age and lameness to the test of a
Channel crossing and a French
diligence,
just for Lydia’s sake — if, that
is, she were so spoiled and selfish as to allow it.

Spoiled and selfish. The
Bath song trilled in her head again. She silenced it by an act of will and an
invocation: Heystead. She would only think about that dilemma (what dilemma? —
there could be none: she was not going to spend the summer bear-leading a
feather-headed chit about Bath, and that was that: problem, then, call it a
problem) when she was back at Heystead. There reason and harmony would be
restored along with Mary’s Lincolnshire vowels.

At post-chaise speed it
was just possible to complete the journey up the Great North Road to Heystead
in a day. Lydia had done it once: never again: you arrived fractious and
exhausted and then had to sleep on your face. Instead they broke the journey
overnight at the Wheatsheaf in Alconbury, where the mutton and the fleas were
alike tolerable, and came into Lincolnshire fresh the next day, under a noon
sun beginning to fight free of marauding cloud. Everywhere looked green. A
fallacy, no doubt, but she was too contented to explore it.

And here was the steep
lane between ancient beeches with its wickerwork of shadows, the ruined
gatehouse, the mossy stone walls, the winding drive; and Heystead Priory itself
heaving into sight, a listing ship in a turf sea. Lopsided: heavy: splendid.
Behind the neat horizontal line of the parapet jostled the old medieval
roofline, all spikes and twisting chimneys: relics in a hatbox. The colour of
the walls was somewhere between chestnuts and cider.

‘Oh, I shan’t be
hurrying to goo away from here agin for a proper while,’ Mary said cheerfully.

Lydia’s heart echoed
her. The post-chaise drew up in the courtyard with a last soft gravelly growl,
and Dr Templeton emerged from the shady whale’s-mouth of the great porch. Very
lame now, and leaning heavily on his stick, but determined, he came to let down
the step and hand Lydia and Mary out of the carriage.

‘That’s it. That’s well.
Ah, here we are. Sound in wind and limb, yes? Capital, capital . . . Daniel, if
you will be so good as to see to the luggage — and, Mrs Gilmore, I feel sure
the postilion would welcome some of your veal-and-ham pie . . .’ At last Dr
Templeton took Lydia’s arm and smilingly said, as he always did: ‘“The harvest
truly is plenteous.”‘ And then she knew she was home.

An observer, knowing
nothing of Dr Templeton and his daughter, and recruited to spy upon their
reunion from behind the priory’s oak panelling, might have concluded that no
very strong attachment existed between them. No fond embraces, no gabbling of
news and I-missed-you avowals: instead civil enquiries and measured exchanges,
before Lydia presently went upstairs to change out of her travelling-dress.

What the observer would
have missed was the steadfast warmth, which needed no raking up into a blaze.
Lydia and her father’s relation maintained its closeness by a mutual allowance
of space.

Unpacking could wait:
first, this.

Her bedchamber
overlooked the terraced gardens that descended in lazy steps to the river, and
one of the two windows contained a window-seat broad and deep enough for a bed.
Here she sat, legs drawn up, one of her new books placed by her side, unopened:
call it a rehearsal, or appetiser, for the summer to come. She listened.
Heystead, never noisy, was never silent. Even a new chair may give off a creak
a few moments after someone has got up from it: the old Priory made a constant
murmurous reply to its six hundred years of occupancy. She opened the
diamond-paned window and admitted a polleny waft of spring: it met but did not
mingle with the cool dark scents of beeswaxed wood and secretive stone. Very
thinly, like sharp straws stuck into the quiet, came the bleating of sheep from
the meadows on the other side of the river; but there was no song except that
of a blackbird, which did not demand to be listened to.

Dinner was early.
‘Unconscionably early, no doubt, when you are used to town hours,’ her father
said, as they sat down. ‘Which reminds me, is Mary out of love yet?’

‘The last sigh was at
Stamford, so I think the cure is complete.’

‘I have been unable to
resist looking into that volume of Cyprian — a magnificent thing, and I’m sure
not easily come by. I hope, my dear, you did not waste all your time seeking
out presents for me.’

‘I wish I could have brought
you something more — the notes on the Harleian manuscripts you wanted; but I am
afraid the British Museum would not even open its doors to me. Next time I must
ask George to lend me coat and breeches, so I can go
en travestie.’

‘You might do no better
then: the collection is sadly ill-run. I’m sorry you were put to the trouble,
my dear.’ Dr Templeton poured the wine while Lydia carved the pork: they chose
not to be waited on at table when dining alone. ‘But you had better
entertainment in town than that, I hope.’

‘George and Susannah
were all kindness,’ Lydia said, feeling a peculiar restraint in talking of
London, ‘and the children were more or less delightful. You will find them very
much grown when they come to us in August.’ She accepted her wine gratefully.
‘How odd that we always exclaim over children growing, as if in the ordinary
run of things they shrink . . . Oh, you remember I wrote you about the
patriotic songs that
must
be sung after every theatre performance now?
Well, I braved Drury Lane again last week — Mr Kemble’s Coriolanus, very fine,
he even moved about a little — and for the climax of the evening the
tragedienne reappeared dressed as Britannia and led us in a spirited
composition called “United and Hearty, Have at Bonapartee”. Really I protest —
what is left for the satirical mind to invent, when reality so surpasses it?’

Watching her father
chuckle with his quiet dry relish, Lydia was caught unawares by a giddy gust of
emotion. For the past two months he had eaten alone in this lofty dining-room:
no conversation, no company but the sad scraping echoes of knife on solitary
plate. Leaving aside every other reason, what sort of daughter would she be if
she were to leave him alone again merely to flit about Bath all summer?
Righteous indignation filled her. Really it was a shocking proposal. Lydia
regarded him with fondness strengthened by her impromptu outrage. A slight,
neatly made man: a fine head, plentiful grey hair plainly dressed above a
prominent brow: features less handsome than strong and decided: lines, many
lines, patient and deep-grooved: intelligence in every one of them.

‘We live in strange
times,’ he said. ‘Hard times also, alas. I have given away as much stock and
fodder as I can this spring, and Mr Durrant has done likewise, but what we need
above all is a kindly summer and a good harvest. The hay and clover promise
poorly, but one must hope.’

‘How is Mr Durrant? I
have some news for him from London — well, not news precisely. Probably a
confirmation of what he already knows. I saw Hugh Hanley: very agreeable, very
dandified, and very pleased with himself, and seemingly bent on every
extravagance that may bring his uncle to grey hairs. A commission in the Prince
of Wales’s Own is the latest.’

‘Ah! Poor Mr Durrant had
more than a hint of it, in his latest letter from the young man. He told me
about it when he dined here last week.’ (Well, anyhow, Lydia thought, dining
alone
most
of the time.) ‘I fancy his nephew’s conduct has become
something more than an irritation to Mr Durrant now: it seems to be preying on
his mind most vexingly. He has been here often of late, and seeming to wish to
talk.’ (Very well, alone
some
of the time.) ‘And loquacity, as you know,
is not his habit.’

‘I am sorry for Mr
Durrant — and would be more sorry, if I did not suspect he enjoys being
miserable. But if the thought of Mr Hanley as his heir is so very detestable,
there must surely be some remedy — some legal recourse.’

‘I fear not. Culverton
is entailed; and though there is some part of Mr Durrant’s property that is
alienable, I know he is loath to break up what he has worked so hard to
consolidate.’

‘Then there is only one
answer. He must shut up the house, take up residence in London, and become a
great swell: apply himself to running up vast tailors’ bills, fribbling away a
nightly fortune at the gaming-tables, and driving a high-perch curricle through
Hyde Park. With a good hand at the ribbons. You see, I am up in all the new
slang. Now
that,
I think, would put Hugh Hanley’s nose thoroughly out of
joint.’

‘I’m sure it would,’ her
father smiled, ‘and I might suggest it to Mr Durrant, if I thought he could
endure such a life for a moment. But I believe he has
something
in mind
to, as he put it, “make the little coxcomb sit up”.’ He laughed at Lydia’s
expectant look. ‘My dear, I don’t know what. He did not say, and I did not
ask.’

‘To be sure — though you
have been friends for years, you are men after all; nothing short of torture will
make you give a confidence, or solicit one. Well, I must ask Mr Durrant myself:
he takes everything I say as an impertinence, so it won’t signify.’