An Accomplished Woman (9 page)

‘I do have thoughts of
asking him to dine, perhaps the day after tomorrow. I did not wish to inflict a
dinner on you too promptly after your return. But I am thinking of your friend
Mrs Paige, who has her sister staying with her, and is, I think, finding her
entertainment rather difficult.’

‘Not again. Poor Emma.
Is Mrs Vawser — is she much as she ever was?’

‘Even more so, if you
take my meaning,’ Dr Templeton said, wincing: to speak ill of someone cost him
a physical effort. ‘I thought if we held a dinner it might
dilute
Mrs
Vawser, at least for an evening, and relieve Mrs Paige a little. And, of
course, you will have the opportunity to hear all the news of the
neighbourhood.’

‘Well, you must tell me
it first: you will make it more amusing.’

‘Oh, there is very
little. Miss Beaumont’s brother had one of his turns, but there was not much
damage done.’

‘Did he keep his
breeches on this time?’

‘Approximately . . . But
come, you must have much more to tell than I. London can be ghastly, but never
dull. What are the latest fashions, and the latest scandals — or are they one
and the same?’

‘At Queen Anne Street,’
Lydia said, after an undecided moment, ‘there is just now a fashion for
marrying people off: but I declined to adopt it.’

‘Ah,’ said her father,
and applied himself to his dinner for a tactful moment. ‘Well, I have always
believed that one should wear just what is comfortable and suitable; and I
think the same holds good for fashions of another kind.’

‘Oh, it was no great
matter, Papa, and if I made it so then that was my fault and folly. I trust
that the candidate — a perfectly blameless, boring man — has forgotten about it
as quickly as I should have. But I have brought home a — a disquiet, from quite
another source, and that quite unexpected: from Lady Eastmond.’

‘Now, indeed, you do
surprise me,’ he rumbled, in his slow sonorous way: next to Dr Templeton, everyone’s
voice was a twitter. ‘Surely
she
has not been pressing you to marry: she
has such good sense. Unless you mean she is ill—?’

‘No, no — nothing of
either sort. Lady Eastmond is thoroughly herself. I saw her only twice in town,
but she . . .Well, you recollect that they have taken in a relation, a ward of
Sir Henry’s.’

‘The Scotch girl, yes. I
had a rather mournful letter from Sir Henry lately, lamenting that his wife
would be deserting him even longer now that she had her young charge to show
about town. So, did you meet her?’

‘Only briefly. I thought
no more about it, until . . .’

Very soon, it was out.
She was scrupulous in the telling: just Lady Eastmond’s proposal, and what it
would entail, and what her answer had been. And as soon as it was over, there
was relief, absurd relief: for there was so little to it, after all! Certainly
not enough to warrant her rehearsing this speech in her mind all throughout the
journey up from London, as she realised now she had, ridiculously. She felt
light, and revived: she took another glass of the wine, which was excellent.
She thought, with tolerant amusement, how odd the world was.

‘I am only sorry for
poor Sir Henry’ she concluded, going to the sideboard for the second course,
‘if it means that Lady Eastmond, after all, is the one who takes Miss Rae to
Bath; but there, perhaps, I may do some real good, by pleading his cause, and
persuading her to choose some other companion for the task. Lady Eastmond has
after all such a vast circle of acquaintance: there will surely be someone
suitable, who will find the pleasure in the prospect that I cannot.’

‘Oh, yes,’ her father
said after a moment. ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure someone will be found.’

‘Will you have
apple-dumpling, Papa? Or the gooseberry tart?’

‘Just a very little of
the tart, my dear . . .’ He waited until she had sat down again before saying,
in his gentlest and most unargumentative way: ‘Of course, the person Lady
Eastmond would have preferred is you.’

‘I know — is it not the
most curious misjudgement on her part? As if I could be anything but an
ill-tempered hindrance in such a situation. I am glad I was able to give Lady
Eastmond a definitive answer there and then, so as to save trouble later.’

Dr Templeton picked at
the sliver of tart. Smaller appetite, she noticed. ‘You did, then — forgive me,
I may have understood imperfectly — you did say, absolutely, no?’

‘Well, to be sure: it
seemed a very much more reasonable thing than yes, to a proposal that fills one
with horror. Oh, Lady Eastmond was — was Lady Eastmond, in short: not at all
put out, and declaring that she would persuade me at last. She would bring Miss
Rae over to Heystead and improve the acquaintance, and so forth: but still my
mind was made up.’ Lydia looked down at the apple-dumpling on her plate. She
could not imagine wishing to eat it.
‘Is
made up.’

Her father nodded
thoughtfully. ‘You must, of course, do what you believe to be right. Which is a
shocking truism, forgive it. I know you have no taste for such a place as
Bath—’

‘And neither do you, Papa,’
she said, seizing what looked like an advantage. ‘Confess, you were as bored as
I when we went there; and we had each other, at least, for rational
conversation.’

‘True. You do not
consider Miss Rae likely to be rational?’

‘She is twenty years old,
has seen nothing of the world, and is in love with two men whom she has just
met. If there is rationality to be found in such a creature, she must be a
wonder: the Royal Society should put her under glass.’

Dr Templeton smiled
reluctantly. ‘Yet Lady Eastmond, you say, speaks well of her.’

‘Yes, simply from the
sheer goodness of her heart. And Miss Rae may indeed have, leaving brain aside,
the disposition of an angel. This still does not alter my resolution — though I
do not, by the by, generally rub along well with the angelic — not to be placed
in such a false position. I would hate it, Miss Rae would see that I hated it
and start hating it too, and Lady Eastmond would wish she had never thought of
it.’

‘Oh, I doubt that last:
Lady Eastmond tends to find the best in everything; and as I said, she is so
very attached to you that I do not think she could find fault in anything you
did.’

‘Papa, you are quite
playing the devil’s advocate today,’ Lydia said, with a lightness that was
somehow thin, like the note of a string about to snap. ‘If you are not careful,
I shall suspect you of wanting to be rid of me for the summer.’

‘I should be sorry to
lose your company again, under any circumstances,’ Dr Templeton said, in his steady
way.’ And I quite understand why this proposal does not appeal. Indeed, if it
came from any other quarter, I would not trouble about it. When it comes from
Lady Eastmond, who has such a claim upon the family, it is of course more
problematical — and requires the serious thought that you have plainly given
it, my dear.’

‘Yes, I . . .Yes.’ Lydia
had a stranded, helpless feeling: as if in walking up a familiar staircase she
had found the top step missing, empty ‘I hope I would never dismiss anything
that was important to Lady Eastmond.’

‘I know you would not.’

He smiled his twinkling,
faintly melancholic smile; and for a moment Lydia saw that it would be possible
to be afraid of him, as one is afraid of the truly good.

And then he gracefully
dropped the subject — his peculiar skill: talking with Dr Templeton you could
always move smoothly on to other things, with no feeling of something left
unsaid, lumpy and protuberant through the conversational surface. Yet Lydia was
vigilant against the subject’s return through the rest of the evening, and as a
result could not be easy: the pianoforte clattered dully at her touch; and at
last, pleading tiredness as an excuse for her want of spirits, she declared for
an early bed. She took with her a new-lighted candle, and a feeling she could
only describe to herself as thwarted.

Which made no sense:
unless she had been privately hoping for something from her father — a complete
endorsement, even absolution — which it was not in his nature to give, nor hers
to require.

And yet, following her
up the broad staircase like her own flowing shadow, she felt a reproach. A
voice, plaintive and otherworldly, whispered along with the rustling of her
skirts, and would not be denied. Admitting defeat, Lydia stopped at the first
landing, lifted the candle, and conjured the ghost.

The full-length portrait
of her mother was by Gainsborough, painted when he was beginning his
fashionable career at — of course — Bath, and she was the fascinating young
heiress Rosina Holdsworth. The canvas was an intersection of two kinds of
beauty: the luminous young woman looking over her ivory shoulder at the wielder
of those brilliant tender brushstrokes, transfigured by them and transfiguring
them. And yet the portrait had never given Lydia any strong sense of her
mother’s presence: instead it placed her among the other painted,
fictionalised, absent people — ancestral Templetons mostly — whose framed faces
loomed decoratively up the stairs and along the gallery.

There was very little of
her mother at Heystead altogether. In the winter parlour her spinning-wheel did
still stand in its old place, devotedly dusted and polished by Mrs Gilmore the
housekeeper. Lydia also kept a silver locket of her mother’s in her jewel-box,
and in the library a few books bore her fading signature on the flyleaf. But
beyond that, it seemed, Rosina Templeton had scarcely inscribed herself on
Heystead in her thirteen years of life here, as bride, wife, mother, woman.

Lydia lowered the
candle, and her mother went smiling into the devouring dark. She seemed to
know, as Lydia knew, that there was more than one way of survival. She would
after all be accompanying her daughter to her bedchamber: sharer of the
sleepless hours she had created.

Undressing, Lydia
thought about stories. Undressing, pushing her gown to the floor, Lydia thought
about her body, and thought about the stories written on it. As she stepped out
of the ruffled pool of muslin the narrative of flesh began to tell itself. The
white arms related her status as a lady, but also the family fairness: the hint
of rounding about her shoulders recalled the adolescent consciousness of her
height, the urge to stoop and draw in, conquered only in the chapter of
adulthood. Unrolling her stockings, she unfolded her habits and tastes: the
long slender delicately muscled legs spoke of her pleasure in walking, her
dislike of riding. There was even a corroborative detail in the rough little
spur just above her right ankle, remnant of the broken bone she had sustained
in falling from a pony when she was eleven.

Self-stories,
authenticated by memory. How slippery and vague, by comparison, were family
stories, which sprang from the void before your birth. Handed down, amended,
distorted even for reasons personal and protective, they became dubious
heirlooms that would not stand up to objective scrutiny. Yet Lydia believed she
had as fair an edition of her mother’s story as was possible. Little of it came
from her mother, who had never been confidential with her; but the deficiency had
been made up by her father and Lady Eastmond, the two people who — perhaps —
knew Rosina Templeton best.

She had lived with the
story as you live with a favourite book, which changes with you as you change
and grow. The version retelling itself in her mind as she sat nightgowned and
wakeful on her bed was appropriate to the thirty-year-old Lydia Templeton: who
was sceptical, mistrustful of passion as of all imbalances, and inclined to
subversive amusement, but not without a strain of fancy. For example, the story
had to begin with that of her father, because that narrative seemed — fatefully
yes, romantically — always to be moving towards the moment of meeting with her
mother: to be waiting for her.

Edmund Templeton, at
sixty-eight the much-respected proprietor of Heystead Priory and its
considerable estate, Justice of the Peace for Kesteven, and a private scholar
and antiquarian of more than local repute, had never been intended by destiny
for any of these things.

He was certainly born at
Heystead, which for five generations had been the seat of the Templetons:
sturdy Lincolnshire gentry with, on the whole, little pretension and much
self-satisfaction. The line, the inheritance, naturally proceeded through the
eldest sons. Edmund Templeton was the youngest of three. Old Mr Templeton was
the type of the country squire, only deviating from the model in an absence of
geniality, and an excess of harsh self-consequence; and he had been very little
affected by the loss of his wife at a young age, except in so far as it
deprived him of one more person to dominate. Of his three sons, the eldest and
heir, Francis, was turned off the same lathe as himself, and hence enjoyed the
greater proportion of his regard: he rode and hunted with his father, studied
with him the arts of deep drinking and swearing, and cultivated a proper
indifference to the feelings of others. The second son, Charles, was less
brutish, but just as energetic; and on reaching his majority acted suitably
both to his inclinations and his father’s expectations, and took a commission
in the army.