Dorothy Eden (30 page)

Money. The increased profits, Beatrice said, must as always go towards improvements and expansion. That clever American shopkeeper, Gordon Selfridge, was building a large department store in Oxford Street. He was expecting to lure custom from the established stores by means of brilliant and extravagant publicity ideas.

Bonnington’s had neither the wish nor the ability to trade on Mr Selfridge’s scale. They must remain what Beatrice, with the assistance of Adam and Miss Brown, had so painstakingly created from Papa’s hotch-potch drapery, a shop of taste and quality catering for the better-class customer, and with a reputation for the best window-dressing in England. People said that it was bettered only by shops in the Place Vendome and the Rue de Rivoli. Even William agreed that this was so. He said that it all stemmed from Beatrice’s early morning visit to Bon Marché on her honeymoon!

With the kind of husband and children she had, Beatrice reflected, she would not have dared to run a cheap or cut-price business. They would have looked down their disdainful noses. Neither could she have displayed the Royal Warrant, her own private medal, outside a vulgar establishment.

So let Mr Selfridge beat drums and fill his vast floors with the curious. Bonnington’s would go on in its usual well-bred way, and keep its customers. All the same, it might be that Florence’s Russian exhibition had come at an opportune time. That was a point to be conceded to Florence without, one hoped, her triumph going to her head.

The profits simply must not slump because her family grew more and more expensive. Sitting at her desk in the morning room, Beatrice did her accounts over again. William’s allowance had been increased because of rising prices, and because he must be allowed his extravagances (the little Cotman, the yellow-ground Worcester dinner set, the Chinese red lacquer chest which exactly matched the red lacquer grandfather clock in the hall). William had an instinct for colour, as proved by his marvellous iridescent butterfly collection. These objects were heirlooms, as Beatrice fully recognised. Though for whom? That troublesome little cuckoo, Daisy?

Edwin, in Berlin, had not mended his spendthrift ways, either. It seemed that to get on in his career he must give elegant (he called them “
recherché
”
)
dinner parties with the best food and wines. To these he invited influential people, not only members of the Embassy staff, but Germans, those smart young officers of crack cavalry regiments he so admired, and their women friends. He had twice mentioned a Baroness Thalia von Hesselman, but this may merely have been Edwin’s habit of name-dropping.

William wanted Beatrice to wash her hands of Edwin now, tell him he was out on his own, make him grow up. “Don’t let him be like me,” he said, “I’ve always lived on you.”

“That’s quite different. Anyway, you work so hard at your books, and that’s a lasting achievement. If only Edwin would work as hard.”

“Perhaps he’ll marry a rich wife.” William’s voice had its tinge of irony. “I’d recommend it.”

“Would you?” Her too eager response was unguarded. She saw his gentle polite smile. His manners were too good. Simply too good.

The bill Edwin had just sent her for a pair of eighteenth-century duelling pistols of exquisite and irresistible quality, if she could just help him out temporarily because Grandmamma had unfortunately refused, had provoked that conversation with William. Now Beatrice pressed her lips together and wrote emphatically,

“No, my dear boy, you must take the pistols back to the dealer you bought them from. I am not made of money. I have all too many commitments. Surely these objects are quite unnecessary to either your welfare or your happiness.” (Were William’s treasures necessary to his happiness?)

Florence, apart from her ambitious ideas at the shop, seemed to have few personal requirements. Too few. She lived unnaturally quietly when not at business. She had asked that the day nursery, the old mirror room (what an enormous pity Mamma with her lack of aesthetic values had once destroyed that), be made into a sitting room for her, and she spent all her spare time there, mostly alone. She was too young to live so serious and sober a life. But the hard flippancy she had assumed after her ruined love affair seemed to be permanent. Beatrice doubted if she would ever now know what her daughter was feeling or thinking. If indeed she had ever known…

But Daisy, at her finishing school, was another matter. According to her father, she required a great many expensive extras, like music lessons, art equipment, riding and dancing lessons, and a remarkably full wardrobe for a schoolgirl. This was necessary because of the theatres, the operas and dinner parties, and apparently all the other pupils were the daughters of millionaires! Daisy must not be outshone, must she, said William in his doting voice.

Could she be? Beatrice retorted.

This finishing school idea seemed to have turned into one long festive occasion for William and his favourite child. He was constantly slipping over to Paris to beg the headmistress (whom he had obviously charmed) to allow Daisy to accompany him to see the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamps, or Sarah Bernhardt in a new play, or to go riding in the Bois de Boulogne, or to dine at Maxim’s.

Daisy was seventeen, going on for eighteen. She would have to come home soon.

Beatrice was ashamed of herself for dreading that day. She wished she could look at Daisy and not see her mother. But it was impossible. The prejudice and the pain were too deep, and ineradicable.

William would expect Daisy’s coming out to be something in the style of minor royalty, that was certain. There would be balls, parties, soirées, the old treadmill which Florence would boycott, and which she herself once more would have to pretend to enjoy. And at the end of it, probably, a large expensive society wedding.

In addition to this coming expenditure of thousands of pounds, Mamma was now a semi-invalid and required a nurse in attendance, as well as the faithful Miss Finch. The bills from the house in Heath Street had gone up astronomically, and Mamma had developed senile miserliness. She refused to pay any of the servants or tradesmen. She was saving all her money for dear Edwin who didn’t care a button for her. She had also had sent from Bonnington’s the most expensive white satin lace-trimmed nightgown they had in stock. It was for her funeral. She didn’t intend to be buried looking like a lady’s maid.

This was all too much for one woman, Beatrice thought, tapping her pencil absently, frowning in anxiety. Was there another woman in England who carried so much on her shoulders?

Overton House, for instance, at this time in its two-hundred-year old history, needed extensive repairs to the roof, and dry rot had been discovered in the attics. There had been workmen prowling about for weeks, and William had had to lock away his work, and go off to Paris to escape the annoyance.

Miss Sloane, after years of loyal but uninspired service in the schoolroom, had gone, and so had the French mademoiselle whom William had insisted on engaging for Daisy before she had been sent to school. Old age had forced Dixon to give up working. He could no longer mount the steps to his coachman’s seat, nor control mettlesome horses. A young man, Johnnie Greaves, had taken his place, but William was talking of getting rid of the carriage and getting one of the new motors. At least it wouldn’t require feeding when not working, as horses did. It would surely be an economy, which ought to please Beatrice.

Lizzie, now that the children were grown, had stayed on as a housemaid. Cook, too, in her sixties, intended to stay until she could no longer beat an egg satisfactorily. Overton House was their home. Hawkins was the third servant who could not imagine life anywhere else or with any other mistress. She was a little younger than Miss Brown, and considerably fitter, which was a good thing, because Miss Brown’s days at Bonnington’s were numbered. Shortly she would have to lie in her bed in that dark lonely house in Doughty Street, her blue nose pointing at the ceiling, her breathing rattling and wheezing with the bronchitis she couldn’t throw off.

There would be a handsome pension for her, of course. But she probably wouldn’t require it for very long.

There were other pensions to be paid, too. Beatrice refused to neglect a loyal employee grown old or incapacitated. This philanthropy could be carried to ridiculous ends, Florence objected. If pensions were to be paid, one should begin by stopping a small percentage from the staff’s weekly wages. Accumulated over the years, this sum should take care of them in their old age.

But one liked the personal touch, Beatrice said. “You just want to be Lady Bountiful,” Florence said scornfully. Florence, it seemed, was always going to want a fair return for outlay. Which was good for Bonnington’s future, of course. But not for the heart she ought to have.

Well, money had been the motivating factor in her own life ever since her courtship, Beatrice admitted. She had accepted that fact then, so she could hardly complain now that it seemed to grow into a more imperative matter each year.

She was only a little tired. She would keep going for another ten years at least. What would she do without her life at the shop, anyway?

William wouldn’t want her at home day after day. Her presence would be an embarrassment and a bore. He considered that the nights were enough, side by side in the big bed. Although there were a great many of these when William was away, especially now that Daisy had to be looked after in Paris. They didn’t often touch as they lay in bed. They were getting a bit old for that sort of thing, weren’t they?

Beatrice had long ago taught herself to be content (or as near content as possible) with what she had, William’s loved familiar body beside her, the sound of his breathing, sometimes his hand briefly in hers, sometimes a little drowsy talk. His health had been surprisingly good over recent years, but he still had a delicate look. When sleeping, with his worn cheeks and his little pointed beard touched with silver, he had a frail monkish look.

She had poured out so much love on this face, this body, this mind, this intangible spirit that was William Overton. She refused to dwell on the fact that at fifty she was still waiting for some of it to be returned.

In the late autumn it was obvious that Grandmamma at last was dying. She kept asking for Edwin. “Where is he, Bea? Is he like his father, chasing women in Europe?”

“Mamma!”

The gross shape heaved beneath the bedclothes in a sad attempt at a chuckle.

“Did I speak out of turn? Sorry. Your father never thought of me if he could think of the shop. I’d have preferred it to be a woman.”

Then she seemed to wander. “Beatrice! There was a bird—”

“Who do you mean? Miss Finch?”

“No, no, no. A cuckoo. I know. Old Brownie knows, too. Safe as the grave, old Brownie.”

Daisy, thought Beatrice. She’s always known. Poor sad old thing. Will my children know as little about me as I do about my mother when I lie dying?

“Would you like a drink of water, Mamma? A little beef tea?”

“Nothing. Nothing more in this world.” The ghostly chuckle heaved in the breathless chest again. “What a relief. All that putting into one’s stomach, and getting out again. Tiresome things, bodies. Glad to—” She stopped speaking, and seemed to sleep. A few moments later she opened her eyes and said in an uncannily normal voice, “Bea, your father always said money could do anything. Well, it produced Edwin and Flo and I suppose that naughty Daisy, too. In a different way, heh? Heh, Bea? But don’t go on—”

“Don’t go on what, Mamma?” Beatrice asked, bending over the suddenly collapsed face.

“Expecting it to bail you out of trouble. Tell Edwin.”

“Edwin will be here tomorrow, Mamma. You can tell him yourself.”

“All the same, when Joshua began making money I thought it was fine.” Mamma’s eyes, opaque grey and white marbles, stared sorrowfully at Beatrice. “But it doesn’t make you happy. Have you found that out, Bea?” A quick panic passed over her face. “Don’t let Miss Finch hear. I’ve kept it from her that I was a ser-servant.” The hated word stumbled on her thick tongue. Before it could be spoken properly, she was gone.

A long expelled breath and there was just this gross body that had never succeeded in forgetting the long-ago hunger and poverty and humiliation.

I will have a ghost in me, too, Beatrice thought, gently closing the staring eyes. But everyone, if they have lived at all, must share their deathbed with at least one ghost. Poor Mamma’s at least was innocent, and part of herself. Not another woman…

T
HE WILL WAS TO
be read after the funeral, when Edwin had arrived from Germany and Daisy from Paris. Beatrice asked that this occasion take place in the drawing room at Overton House. She didn’t think she could stand the gloom of Mamma’s house, where the dark cluttered claustrophobic rooms were still full of the musty stuffy smell of old flesh, and uncleaned clothes with overtones of lavender water that was so individually Mamma.

She had always hated that house, anyway, and in the half light of a foggy November day it would be insupportable.

An enormous fire burned in the fireplace of her own drawing room. William, who hadn’t gone to the funeral because it was such a dank cold day and gravesides were such famous places for catching pneumonia, was sitting in his favourite armchair. He had grown noticeably older lately, Beatrice realised with a pang. His look of interesting frailty was near to gauntness. But he was still the best-looking man she had ever met, with his lively brown eyes, his charming gentle smile, his air of courtesy and breeding, even his look of quiet acquiescence to fate. He hadn’t always had that look, but one tried not to notice it.

She herself felt that she could have benefited from a little of his frailty. She was altogether too healthy and indestructible, although sometimes she fancied Florence was turning into a coldly ambitious young woman. One could see her ultimate objective would be control of Bonnington’s, and that not too far ahead. If only she would find herself a husband. One didn’t want a Miss Brown in the family, perpetually dressing other brides.