Ashenden (17 page)

“I do not propose the children should be educated above their station, but it would be a great shame and a pity if they grew up to be as ignorant as their parents. Do you not agree?”

Mrs. Trimble had sometimes been asked to read a letter for a villager or estate worker (although not the unfortunate Butlers) and had on rarer occasions been asked to write one. For such services she had received small offerings in kind.

“There is a day school in the next village.”

“That costs money.”

“And your school would be free?”

“Of course. Although naturally the teacher would be paid.”

“Subscriptions?”

“No.” Rowena lowered her voice. “Money is not a particular concern. To be frank, I have a little allowance of my own and I am confident more might be raised if need be.”

The girl had thought about premises too. There was an outbuilding at the vicarage which was unused and could be made serviceable with whitewash and perhaps a small stove. She had spoken to Reverend Cummings about it.

“The great advantage is that it has its own entrance by the lane, so it is somewhat set apart.” She clasped her hands in her lap. Fervor had made her almost pretty. “There it is. What do you think? I should value your opinion.”

Mrs. Trimble collected the cups and saucers and put them back on the tray, making more noise than was necessary. She wanted the girl to go. It was hard to hear about someone else’s plans when you were staring at the dead end of your own future.

“I wish you well with your enterprise, Miss Henderson. You are obviously your father’s daughter.”

“That would be news to him.”

Mrs. Trimble did not know what to make of the comment and chose to ignore it. A coal shivered in the hearth. The cat leapt onto the windowsill, washed his paw, and pretended he had no interest in the milk jug.

“There is one other thing,” Rowena said, the workings of her mind playing across her face. “I should like you to run the school.”

There were times when you lost your footing in the world, when the ground turned into air and you couldn’t tell whether you were falling or flying. Mrs. Trimble stared at the crack in the lid of the teapot. A tremendous silence was coming from somewhere and it was as loud as a train.

Rowena must have heard it too, because she rushed to fill it. “You don’t have to give me your answer now. But I do ask you to consider it. I cannot think of anyone better suited. Someone who loves books as much as you do would be an excellent teacher. Besides which, the villagers know you and I am sure that they would be happy to entrust their children to your care.”

Mrs. Trimble thought of the unread books upstairs and the way the locals kept her at arm’s length. It was almost laughable how people misread and misled each other.

“I am sorry. I don’t think I’m the one you want. I was a housekeeper, not a governess. I have never taught anyone.”

Rowena smiled. “And I have never opened a school. Come,” she said, touching Mrs. Trimble on the arm, “we shall be babes in the wood together. In any case, you do yourself a disservice. Housekeepers manage and calculate and instruct, do they not? I cannot see how teaching children their ABCs and two plus twos would be beyond someone of your capabilities.” She got up from her seat and shook out her skirts. “I understand you might be reluctant to give up your pleasant, quiet life. All I ask is that you think about it.”

Mrs. Trimble followed her to the door, wondering which part of her life was pleasant and which part was quiet.

“Oh, good, it has stopped raining,” said Rowena. “More to the point, by the time I’m back, I shall have missed Sunday luncheon.”

“Is that a cause for celebration?”

“Yes. It is.” She turned on the doorstep. “Please consider it.”

*  *  *

For Philip, a dull week ensued. Tomorrow succeeded today, his father took the train to town, and all he had been meaning to say remained unsaid. The ground steadied and the faint rocking he felt when he was lying in bed disappeared for good. On dry land at last, he was homesick for a place that was not his home. What he had liked about America, he realized, was that so much of it was unmapped. Life there—thinking of the landlady’s daughter again— had a pleasing quality of not being foretold.

Rowena went to the village again on Monday morning, and in the afternoon his brother Albert challenged him to a rowing race, which Albert won by two lengths. On Tuesday afternoon, Albert challenged him to another rowing race, which ended in a disputed draw. Tuesday evening Wilfred said hello in passing and Caroline asked him many questions about what Americans wore. At his mother’s suggestion, on Wednesday he spent some time in the nursery with the younger boys. John clambered over his knees and slid down his legs. Reginald stood on his hands, twice, toppling a Noah’s Ark and scattering the animals all over the floor. (Takes after Albert, Philip thought.) Cedric shyly showed him his collection of moths and butterflies, along with an unhatched blackbird’s egg, pale greeny blue speckled with brown. On Thursday the egg exploded. Then on Friday afternoon the Butterworths arrived and life took a new turn for Philip.

*  *  *

Ada Henderson had given instructions that her visitors were not to be admitted downstairs but to be directed to the principal entrance off the loggia, and it was with a flurry of servants that they were received there.

“Beatrice!” she said, crossing the entrance hall to greet her friend, who was, she could not help but notice, wearing an altogether more costly and ruffled gown than her brown merino. Beside her was a slender young woman (seventeen, she calculated), with long-lashed brown eyes and a beautiful mouth. “And this, my goodness, must be Florence!” She remembered herself in time to mention the unprepossessing child, all elbows and teeth, holding tight to his mother: “And, of course, young Bertram!”

“My dear Mrs. Henderson. Ada!” said Mrs. Butterworth, releasing Bertram to clasp her friend’s outstretched hands.

“It has been too long.”

“Oh, it has. Indeed it has.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Henderson,” said Florence, in a voice to match the mouth.

“How do you do,” said Bertram.

“Florence is quite the young lady,” said Ada, linking arms with Beatrice and guiding her across the expanse of the hall. “I should never have recognized her. Such a beauty.”

But Beatrice Butterworth, staring round at furnishings and paintings and wall decorations, was lost for words. Ada, seeing her friend’s eyes linger on the heavy folds of the damask hangings, found herself saying, “The crimson drapery is from our own manufactory. The gold gimp, of course, was imported.”

“Those valances,” said Beatrice, her hand at her throat.

Ada said, “I was not entirely convinced about the green satin, but it is a handsome color, don’t you think?” She maneuvered her friend through the huddled groupings of furniture and past an easel, taking pride of place, on which a painting was propped.

Florence asked about the painting.

Her mother found her voice. “I believe it is Mr. Henderson’s Titian,” she said, turning to Ada for corroboration.

“What an excellent memory you have,” said Ada.

“One could hardly forget.” She smiled and her hand fled again to her throat as they passed through to the staircase hall and embarked across the swath of its new carpeting. “My word!”

“Wilton,” said Ada, and immediately regretted the comment. It sounded like boasting and she deplored boasting. To cover up for the lapse, she began talking about “arrangements”—which servants would attend upon them, which rooms they would take. But her friend was not listening. Instead her eyes were flitting here and there, up to the clerestory windows and down again.

“I had imagined,” Beatrice said at last, “the house quite differently. It is clearly
very
well appointed.”

“Let us get you settled and then we shall take tea,” said Ada, entirely gratified by her friend’s reaction. “After your journey, you will be in need of refreshment.”

They took tea in the drawing room. Here Ada experienced afresh the great shock of Florence’s beauty when the girl came through the door, all grace and self-possession. Her younger daughter, Caroline, began twiddling with her ribbons in a sulky and pettish way. Her elder daughter, Rowena, however, who had been prevailed upon to greet the visitors, appeared indifferent.

“Philip and Albert may join us later,” said Ada. “But I am not entirely sure where they are or what they are doing.”

“Albert has gone riding,” said Rowena.

Beatrice said, “I can’t believe Albert is already sixteen!”

“You would not think it,” said Rowena.

“In any case you will meet them both before long,” said Ada. She added that Mr. Henderson, who had business in town, would arrive the next day.

Ada poured and a maid handed round the porcelain cups and saucers, the silver sugar basin, with its monogrammed tongs, and the silver milk jug, with its gilt interior.

“I fear Bertram may have been a little apprehensive about his introduction to the younger boys,” said Beatrice, taking her cup with a murmur of thanks. Bertram had been left, white-faced, in the nursery.

“That is natural,” said Ada. “I daresay he scarcely remembers them. Or John, of course, at all.”

“He remembers Reginald very well,” said Beatrice.

The conversation began to pick up a little. Beatrice asked after the particular decorations and furnishings of the room in which they were sitting. Ada enumerated them, keeping a watchful inner eye on boastfulness. The Greek gods painted on the ceiling she omitted for that reason; also she did not know their names. Then Beatrice, having no other coin to offer, responded by enumerating her daughter Florence’s accomplishments, which were many. No watchful eye there, thought Ada, as Beatrice described singing in the Italian language, painting in watercolor, and a prose composition that had been praised by the vicar of St. Barnabas as revealing a “maturity beyond her years.” At the mention of Florence’s fine needlework, Ada could not help but wonder why Providence, who had distributed its favors so unevenly between her elder and younger daughter, giving Rowena sense and plainness, and Caroline an empty-headed prettiness, should have awarded this Florence a surfeit of everything.

The arrival of Philip, hesitating, stooping in the doorway, was at first a relief. Here was her eldest, the heir, who was not at all bad-looking and was exceedingly well traveled for one barely twenty-two. A credit to any mother. Then she noticed him noticing Florence with an almost physical jolt and the tide of blush that rose over the top of his high collar to wash over his cheeks. “I’m afraid you’re too late, Philip,” she said. “We have drunk all the tea and eaten all the cake.”

Rowena, catching Philip’s eye, rang for the maid and instructed her to bring her brother a cup. She patted the seat alongside and he crossed the room, scarlet to the tips of his ears, and folded his long frame into it.

There followed a general discussion about Philip and his three years in America, as if he had not been in the room. He might not have been, for he did not contribute to it. It was only when Florence asked him, with a slight tilt of her head that made the one long dark-brown ringlet curl against her cheek, what he was presently engaged upon that he opened his mouth. “I have been working on some figures,” he said, with a fresh blush that overlaid the previous one.

At this point conversation died.

Nor did it revive when various squirmings and shushings came from below the furniture. Catching sight of Bertram’s thin leg and new buckled shoe peeking out from underneath a tapestry tablecloth, Beatrice was surprised at this boisterous, somewhat transgressive side of her son’s nature that she had never before suspected he possessed.

*  *  *

“You aren’t attending, Philip,” said his father.

It was Monday morning, two days after the arrival of the Butterworths, and they were sitting in the small estate office beyond the library. No decorative schemes had been devised for it and no new furniture had been ordered. Nothing hung on the walls except a map of the local area showing the new railway line.

“Sorry, sir,” said Philip, shaking himself out of a dream in which he and Florence Butterworth were exchanging a long, hungry kiss . . .

“Are our visitors distracting you?”

“Not at all.”

“Good,” said his father, running a pencil down the columns of figures in the ledger open on the table in front of him.

By any rough estimation, the Henderson fortune was into the millions, yet every week income was measured against expenditure, down to shillings and pence. What was at issue at present was how much time his father’s architect, Mr. Bartholomew, was claiming to be spending on the improvements to Ashenden, set against observable results.

“He’s spread himself too thin,” said his father, throwing down the pencil. “There has been no progress on the stables whatsoever.” The old stable block was derelict and would have to be demolished, which would improve the view from the portico, but the new stables hadn’t been built yet, which was holding things up. “I won’t be cheated because he’s too busy elsewhere with other clients.”

Bartholomew and his father had known each other for many
years, during which time they had woven a fine mesh of mutual clients, interests, and business partners. It was a fabric as strong as any marriage, or so one supposed.

Ashenden had been in a terrible state when his father bought it. The roofs on the side pavilions were missing half their slates and were about to cave in. Indoors was bleak and the park was a heath. Only Bartholomew had understood what his father had seen. No one else had.

“If you ask me, I think he’s done the impossible,” said Philip.

“I don’t ask you, Philip,” said his father. “The man is shortchanging me. It’s as simple as that.”

“What have you paid him?”

“Two thousand, and he won’t get a penny more. It’s a five percent commission and he’s given me a three percent return.”

Philip knew this mood. His father had gone to court for much less. He glanced at the map on the wall. It was plain that the railway, not the stable block, was at the bottom of it all: specifically, Bartholomew’s failure to persuade the Great Western to reroute the line away from the eastern boundary of the estate. Trains might be convenient for the transportation of people and paintings and furnishings, but they were not what you wanted to see or hear when you had paid a great deal of money for a derelict house. A screen of firs and forest trees was the remedy Bartholomew proposed; “a blot on the landscape to disguise another” had been his father’s response, for which Philip had some sympathy.