Blood on the Wood (9 page)

‘What kept you?'

He looked as if he'd got several years older in the last few hours. A house with a row going on has a particular atmosphere to it – as if the air's too thinly stretched.

‘How did Miss Foster take it?'

He collapsed on to a sofa. His neckcloth was untied and his curls were practically standing on end from his hands running through them.

‘I don't know.'

‘Do you mean you haven't told her?'

‘Of course I have. Twice over. I told her and she said “Say all that again”. So I said it all again and she burst out laughing, ran upstairs and locked herself in her room.'

‘Hysterical laughter? Relieved laughter?'

‘Not hysterical, I don't think, but not happy either. Can you laugh in a minor key? Anyway, Adam tried to talk to her but she won't say a word to him. He's furious with me.'

‘What about your uncle?'

‘Not pleased. I had hoped he'd see things from my point of view. After all, he and Aunt Philly spent most of their lives making speeches and drafting reports about giving poor people a fair chance, so you'd have thought he'd be pleased I was doing it for one of them at any rate.'

‘Has he forbidden you to marry Miss Smith?'

‘He can't. I'm over twenty-one. But he says I'm treating Felicia disgracefully and I'll ruin my life if I marry Daisy. Anyway, he's having a family conference with Adam and Carol in the dining room now. If we're lucky, I can get you upstairs without them knowing you're here.'

‘You didn't tell your uncle I was coming?'

‘He wasn't open for being told things. He was too busy telling me what a lunatic I've been.'

For once I agreed with Oliver Venn but I let Daniel lead me up the curving staircase like a conspirator. From the first floor landing, corridors carpeted in sage green led to left and right, with lines of white-painted doors, panelling picked out in the same green. Very calm and tasteful, but still the feeling of domestic thunder in the air.

‘Hers is second on the right.'

Daniel pointed it out to me, then bolted. I called a protest but if he heard it he took no notice. I walked along the clean carpet in my dusty shoes, knocked on the second door on the right and announced my name. With luck, she'd tell me to go away. But the door opened within seconds and there was Felicia, at first glance reasonably self-possessed. At second glance, her cheeks were flushed and the brightness of her eyes came from unshed tears. But she did her brave best.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Bray. Wasn't there anybody downstairs? I'm afraid Mr Venn's rather occupied with a … a family crisis.'

‘I know. I've just been talking to the cause of it.'

‘Daniel?'

‘Daniel.'

She sighed. ‘You'd better come in and sit down.'

Another lovely room, willow pattern curtains and upholstery, blue cushions and carpet. A blue and white desk by the open window had a few sheets of notepaper and an ink bottle on it, so I'd probably interrupted her writing a letter. A difficult letter, judging by the three sheets of screwed-up paper on the carpet. I sat down and she perched on the edge of the chaise-longue.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I'm intruding. Daniel seemed to think it might be a good idea for me to talk to you.'

‘So are you his ambassador?'

‘Ambassador would imply I approve of what he's doing.'

‘You don't?'

‘It isn't my business to approve or disapprove. But if I'm honest, no I don't. He was in a difficult situation but I think he's chosen the wrong way out of it.'

‘By trampling over me? He doesn't care though, as long as he gets what he wants.'

‘I'm not even sure it's a case of what he wants.'

‘Why's he doing it, then? Why's he doing it if he doesn't want her more than he wants me?'

‘He thinks she needs him more.'

‘That's what he was trying to tell me, I think. I laughed at him. Of all the ways to jilt somebody. You meet a girl who's more interesting and more beautiful and you like her better, so you make it sound as if you're giving yourself away to charity, like an old coat. Only he's giving me away as well, giving my whole future away.'

Her face and body, her nice manners, the whole neat package of her was at odds with the distress and anger in her voice.

‘She's not more beautiful than you,' I said, ‘and I don't think he likes her better. But he does feel sorry for her. Will you let me tell you why?'

Up to then she'd been looking me in the face, now her eyes dropped to her clasped hands with their bitten nails, twisting against each other in her lap. They went on twisting while I told her, as gently as possible, Daniel's story of rescuing Daisy. At the end of it she looked up at me again.

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better? Am I meant to feel all forgiving about him and her?'

‘No in both cases, I should say.'

‘Do you know what he said to me, Miss Bray – that it was all right for me because I could marry anybody I liked?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll have my own money in a few months when I'm twenty-one. He seemed to think that helped. Perhaps I should put an advertisement in the papers: “Damaged goods. Open to any reasonable offer.”'

‘Of course you're not damaged goods.'

‘Aren't I? My mother will say so. Most people will say so. If I'm not, what am I?'

‘A human being. And one who's being very badly treated, whatever the motive.'

‘Are you saying you're sorry for me? No, please don't apologise. There are going to be a lot of people feeling sorry for me so I might as well get used to it. Poor Felicia, jilted you know, and for a fiddling girl. Poor Felicia.'

‘What will you do?'

‘What does a woman do? Put willow leaves in my hair and throw myself in the brook?'

‘I shouldn't. You'd only get pulled out by Scipians who'd give you tea with sour milk in and read you lectures on trade union history to cheer you up.'

She looked at me, then started laughing – a little loud and shrill, but real laughter.

‘Well then, answer my question. What do I do?'

‘You might go back to your family and friends for a while.'

‘To my mother? No, thank you.'

‘What are the possibilities?'

‘Goodness knows. Ship myself off to India and pick up some major who's under orders to find himself a wife before he gets promoted.'

‘Does it have to be marriage?'

‘You mean I'm such a failure so far, it's no use…'

‘No, but there are other things.'

‘What things?' She leaned forward, eyes desperately sad. ‘Please don't start lecturing me about teacher training college or learning type-writing. I wanted to be married because I lived in a dark little house in a boring little town and my mother's a clergyman's widow who organises sewing circles and breeds spaniels and plays hymns on Sundays and Gilbert and Sullivan on weekdays on a piano that's always out of tune and … oh, you can't imagine being so bored that every nerve aches from it. Then I met Daniel because his Uncle Oily had been a friend of my father and we … we liked each other and there was an escape at last.'

‘From the boredom?'

‘Yes. Uncle Olly's wife was still alive then and when Daniel and I got engaged she suggested I should move in with them, be a companion to her. Daniel and I would have been married last March, only she was so ill that we put it off, then she died so we had to put it off again.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Yes, it could so easily have been different. So I moved in and … fell in love.'

‘With Daniel? But…'

In spite of her distress, I still wasn't convinced that she'd loved him. She hesitated, as if wondering whether to say the conventional thing and deciding against it.

‘With all of them – the family. You've seen it, how light and beautiful it all is here. Daniel with his music, and Philomena was such a darling and Uncle Oily such fun…'

Not a view of him I shared, though I didn't say so. She was running on, tears pouring down her cheeks.

‘He thinks it's just a matter of finding somebody else, only it isn't like that. Couldn't he understand, I needed rescuing too? It's not only people who live in pigsties who need it. He rescued me once – the whole family did – now he's just throwing me back again and I don't know what I'll do.'

‘I wish I could do something for you.'

‘Tell me to pull myself together? Plenty more fish in the sea?'

‘Not that, no.'

I stood up, aware that I'd been worse than useless to her.

‘Are you going to report back to Daniel?'

‘Do you want me to?'

I'd have to see him, I supposed. The wretched picture had gone out of my mind while she was talking, but now it was back. She shrugged.

‘Do what you like. He'll marry his fiddler girl and that will be an end of it. Daniel's made up his mind.'

I closed the door behind me and stepped out into the corridor. From downstairs a voice called softly, ‘Miss Bray?'

Daniel was standing by the door to the studio, looking up.

‘You can come down. The coast is clear.'

I went down, not bothering to be quiet, tired already of being conspiratorial.

‘Well, how did she take it?'

‘If you mean does Miss Foster understand and forgive you, the answer's no.'

‘Oh.'

‘Did you really expect otherwise?'

‘Well, no. But I suppose I'd hoped … Oh
hell.
I'm sorry.'

‘For the swear word or the mess? So what's happening about Miss Smith?'

‘I've just been talking to Adam. Our parents left us both some money, with Uncle Oily as a trustee. I get my share when I'm twenty-five or when I get married, whichever's earlier. And there's no nonsense in it about the trustees having to approve of who I marry. I think Adam was surprised I'd remembered that because I haven't got a head for business like he has. Anyway, I told him I was going to ask Uncle Oily for the money whether he liked it or not.'

‘Would it be enough for you and Miss Smith to live on?'

‘Not for ever. It's just a few thou. But if I find a room somewhere and get work as a music teacher…' His voice trailed away. He was looking round the big, beautiful room, probably contrasting it with the life of a jobbing music teacher in rented digs. Then, fiercely, ‘I'm not abandoning that girl, whatever happens.'

‘Won't it take time to get married and get the money out of the trust?'

‘That's what Adam says, but I don't see why it should. Anyway, for the sake of peace and quiet I've had to promise them that I won't run off and marry her straight away. In return, Adam and Uncle Olly have agreed to do what they can for Daisy while we get something sorted out. She's to move in here and Carol can chaperone her.'

I thought of that elegant and confident woman and wondered what on earth she and Daisy would find in common.

‘Only we'll have to wait for Felicia to move out first,' Daniel said. ‘Carol seemed to think it wouldn't do for them both to be in the house at the same time.'

I gave him a glare. ‘That hadn't occurred to you?'

‘Oh I say, don't make me out to be a monster. I'm trying to do my best in the circumstances, I really am, only there are so many conventions.'

‘Like having only one wife at once? Maybe you should take yourself off to Utah.'

‘I'll have to take myself off to Outer Mongolia if the atmosphere here doesn't get any better. Do you mind going out through the garden?'

He opened the door on to the terrace. I stayed where I was.

‘Did you get a chance to talk to your brother about the picture?'

‘The picture. Oh yes. Yes I did.'

He hesitated as if trying to remember, then came back into the room and shut the door behind him.

‘I had a word with Adam. He doesn't think we've got a prayer of a chance persuading Uncle Olly.'

‘So I've been wasting my time, then.'

‘Well, not exactly. The thing is … I mean, I've discussed it with Carol too and she's come up with an idea and I really think it's not a bad one.'

‘So?'

‘She thinks – I suppose we both think – that the best thing for you to do is to steal it.'

Chapter Six

I
T TOOK ME A SECOND OR
two to recover. Quite a few more seconds to make it clear to Daniel what I thought of him, his uncle and the Venn family's way of doing business. When I'd finished he shook himself like somebody coming in from a storm.

‘So you don't like the idea?'

‘No.'

‘I didn't mean to offend you. I just didn't expect you to be so conventional.'

‘I'm not conventional. I'm not an art thief either.'

‘Maybe I shouldn't have used the word “steal”. After all, your case is that the picture in Uncle's study is the rightful property of the WSPU.'

‘It's not just my case. It's a fact.'

‘So if you were to take that and substitute the other one, it wouldn't be stealing. It would just be claiming what was yours.'

There was some sense in that. He'd stung me too by calling me conventional. Above all, the idea of wasting a whole weekend and still having to go back to London and admit failure wasn't a pleasant one. Perhaps Daniel saw a change in my expression – he wasn't entirely stupid after all – because he leaned forward and started talking quickly about practicalities. The house was never locked at night. His uncle had suffered from insomnia after Philomena's death and the doctor prescribed a sleeping draught that put him out by eleven o'clock promptly. The picture was hanging over the desk in his study at the far end of the upstairs corridor, with Daniel's room on one side of it and Adam and Carol's suite on the other. Simplest thing in the world to come in by the studio door, creep upstairs, unhook picture, substitute other picture, and get the early train back to town. And the beauty of it was that even if his uncle noticed the substitution—