Fragile Blossoms (15 page)

‘My son has a dog.’

‘Is it thoroughbred?’

‘I think not, Sir, more a mixture.’

‘And does the mixture have a name?’

‘Yes.’ Julia smiled. ‘He’s called Kaiser.’

‘Kaiser? You named him Kaiser! ‘

‘Not named, Sir. He came already crowned.’

‘You inherited a king.’ He laughed and the group laughed with him. ‘And is he a good king, is he obedient to the cause and polite with postmen? ’

‘He is good and he is brave.’

‘Excellent! Let the fellow be brave but let him also know his place. One can’t have kings running amuck. History proves they are like to lose their heads.’

He smiled, stroked his moustache, and suddenly Julia was looking at Stefan and everything was so much easier. ‘Perhaps one day,’ he said, ‘I might meet your Kaiser and give him hints on behaviour fitting a king.’

‘I’m sure he would benefit.’

‘And your little boy, what is his name?’

‘Matthew.’

‘A good name but not a name common to an English king, which in this restless day and age, Mrs Dryden, is not such a bad thing.’

They progressed to the alcove where the
Fauns
were set on easels. The Prince turned to Evie. ‘Well here we are last with your work, Lady Carrington. I know this.’ He tapped the frame of
Faun Surprised
with his cane. ‘My brother Arthur saw it at the National and wanted it for himself. Is that not so?’

Evelyn nodded. ‘It is, Sir.’

‘And if memory serves me right you wouldn’t sell.’

‘I believe I held true.’

‘So you did despite his entreaties.’ He adjusted his monocle.’ And this is brother to the
Faun
or rather one should say sister.’ The Prince took his time gazing at the painting. Then he stepped back and closed his monocle. ‘My congratulations on this, Lady Carrington, and also I think my condolences.’

‘Condolences?’

‘Yes, I fear you’ve placed yourself, and me, in jeopardy.’

‘How so, Sir?’

‘Quite simple.’ The Prince smiled at Julia. ‘My brother wanted only the one likeness. Now having seen the paintings, and met the muse, I want both.’

Daniel was waiting. ‘All present and correct?’

She took his arm. ‘I am a little bit thrown.’

‘You looked quite at ease.’

‘Looks can be deceiving.’

‘May I ask what you talked about?’

‘Dogs.’

‘Dogs!’

‘Yes, his Caesar and Matty’s Kaiser.’

‘A Prince talking of Kings! How very droll.’

Julia laughed. ‘It was.’

‘You looked as if you made a connection. He seemed quite bowled over.’

‘I don’t know about that. Oh here’s Freddie!’

Freddie was outside the Marquee, Callie and Matty with him.

‘There you are Ju-ju!’ Matty and Freddie were licking lollipops. ‘We thought you’d run off with the gypsies.’ He gestured to the Marquee. ‘Is my sister in with the Parisian people?’

‘Actually she is with the Prince of Wales.’

‘Oh yes she said she might. I’d forgotten about him.’

‘Did you enjoy the cinema, Matty?’

Matty grinned and licked the lollipop. ‘It was good.’

‘What about you Callie?’

Callie scowled. ‘I did not enjoy it. So many people breathing one another’s air I’m sure I shall get a cold. So Daniel, I’m ready to go if you are.’

‘You can’t go yet!’ said Freddie. ‘You haven’t seen my stuff and I’ve been hanging on to show you.’ He threw the lollipop away. ‘Lord! That was a mistake! My hands are all gooey.’

Daniel offered a handkerchief.

‘Thanks, I have my own.’ From a warm day it was suddenly cool, Daniel silent, Callie displeased, and Freddie’s blue eyes glittering over white linen

An uneasy group they trailed to another Marquee where a crowd had gathered about one painting.

‘Oh Freddie!’ When John Sargent said he had talent he understated the case. There is talent, a glittering, crashing talent that stuns the onlooker into silence.

‘I call it the White Lady. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know what to think other than it is beautiful.’

Julia was looking at a creature of snow and mist. White hair, white face, lips and eyes, all white and yet so absolutely her it was wonderful and hypnotic and she stared and so did crowd stared, all silent.

‘How did you do it? How did you achieve all that with one colour?’

‘Is that all you see, Ju-ju?’ he said, ‘one colour?’

‘I see a thousand colours and all of them white. I see blue white, and grey white, and gold, and a millions of shades between. I see my hair, and my lashes, and the way you have my mouth, but I don’t know how you did it.’

Freddie looked to Daniel. ‘What do you think of it Masson?’

‘I think it is a master-piece.’

‘Do you indeed?’

Daniel nodded. ‘I do, truly I do.’

A man in the crowd called out. ‘Pray tell us, sir, how many brushes were used for this work, and what medium, and if you used a palette knife.’

Freddie laughed. ‘I used whatever took my fancy, sir, brushes, rags, knives, whatever was close. Most of the time I used my bare hands, which is why I keep ‘em in my pockets, the finger ends rubbed raw.’

The man bowed. ‘I congratulate you on a thing of rare beauty.’

Freddie returned the bow. ‘Thank you, sir, for that. What about you, Julianna? Is this worthy of keeping, if not forever then at least while I last?’

Julia shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to think. It is beyond my vocabulary. I’m not sure there is a word for what you have done.’

Freddie was pleased with the reaction. Face alight, he rocked back and forth on his boot heels. ‘So you really do like it?’

‘I do. It’s wild and it’s lovely and it is so very clever.’

Oh dear! God knows what he wanted her to say but clever wasn’t it.

‘Clever?’

‘Yes and unusual and so very skilful.’

Face stripped of colour he stared. ‘Unusual? Skilful? What words are they?’

Daniel’s hand was suddenly under Julia’s elbow and Matty tugging her skirt. ‘As I said I don’t think I have words for it.’

‘Yes you do! You’ve given it words. You’ve done for it, Julianna Dryden, damned with faint praise.’ He was so pale now he might’ve been another ghost within another portrait, and Julia and the others, standing so silent and shocked, outside the frame. ‘I wanted words from the heart. Sublime would have done! Breathtaking even as are you now, your eyes wide trying to understand! Or even ridiculous, as ridiculous as the idea I could ever paint.’

‘Freddie, please!’

‘No you’re right it is clever. It’s what people say when they don’t understand a work. It’s clever but I wouldn’t hang it on my wall! It’s clever but not to my taste! So let’s be clever and bung it on the furnace. Best place for it.’

He kicked the easel. The portrait fell to the ground. He stomped on it, grinding his boot into the canvas, and then he turned and walked away.

The gentlemen left to their port the ladies withdrew. All ears and whiskers Callie pulled Julia into her private sitting room. ‘You spoke with the Prince?’

‘We exchanged words.’

‘What kind of words?’

‘We spoke of dogs.’

‘And is that all?’

‘That and various paintings. I was only one of many, Callie. Everyone else was eager to speak with him.’

‘I bet they were. What a swizz!’ Callie sat down. ‘I thought he might at least ask who you were but then Evelyn Carrington will have said you sat for the
Fauns
. It’s why you were asked to join them.’

‘Or possibly John Sargent mentioned it?’

‘No,’ Callie shook her head. ‘John would never spring an introduction of that magnitude on an unsuspecting friend.’

‘And Evie would?’

‘Certainly! She’s quite able. Anyone who dismisses a maid without thought to her welfare and then sends roses to the maid’s funeral is able to do anything.’

‘Why are we talking about the Prince of Wales?’

‘Because he is a man of huge influence, none more so. People follow his every mood. A smile from him counts for everything.’

‘And I need his smiles?’

‘If you wish your tea-shop to flourish you need friends and influence, and from what I’ve heard you’ve little of either.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. I had thought you a friend.’

‘I am a friend. It’s why I’m telling you. You’ve made your house uneasy. People are talking. I am old and can ignore such talk you can’t.’

‘I think the problem more outside my house than in.’

‘I’m sure of it but you are not helping! You are too open with your friendships, that absurd display of bad manners this afternoon a case in point.’

‘Freddie was upset and I wasn’t as tactful as I might’ve been.’

‘Nonsense, you were perfectly reasonable. Freddie Carrington behaved badly. Excitable young man he drew attention to himself and to you!’

‘I understand artists tend to be excitable.’

‘It was the behaviour of a spoilt child. You must be more circumspect and avoid those that by behaviour and reputation do you harm.’

‘And encouraging smiles from the Prince of Wales is me being circumspect?’

‘Anna, I’m trying to advise you.’

‘So I understand but in this, my choice of friends, I’m not sure I want to be advised.’ Julia was irritated by Callie’s questioning and couldn’t help but show it. ‘I mind my own business. Why can’t people do the same?’

‘Because in the main people are evil-minded gossips, especially the people of Bakers End! They make it their business to interfere. I know. I’ve lived through it. Pleasance Cottage those two sisters called your place. My memories of that time and this village and the people are anything but pleasant.’

‘Yes but they are your memories not mine.’

‘Stay for any length of time and every memory will be yours.’

‘Is that why the wall was built to keep the village away?’

‘No it was built to keep me away! Justine Newman had the wall erected, men laid the stones, but I put it there and my spleen glued it together!’

Julia stared. Until this day she thought Callie a kindly if rather eccentric old lady. Now she doesn’t know who she is. ‘Why would she hide from you?’

‘Because she took something of mine and wouldn’t give it back. She stole love from under my nose and made my childhood strange. I arrived in this house on my fifth birthday and left on my twentieth because of Justine. I couldn’t be here with her smiling beauty only a matter of yards away.’

‘Justine is gone. She died a long time ago, Mr Simpkin told me.’

Callie was on her feet. ‘What does August Simpkin know? A person dies and people think that’s an end to it. Forty years I stayed away from the home and the country I love, forty years of yearning to return. Now that I am here I find it’s too late. I am old and she is still young and still here!’

‘You need to rest.’

‘I do.’ Callie sat down. ‘There are pills in the work-basket. Yes those!’ She put a pill under her tongue. ‘Give me a moment and it will go.’

‘What ails you?’

‘What ails any woman in her seventies? I’ve seen and felt too much.’

‘Should I call Daniel?’

‘No! He’ll have me on the first boat back to Philadelphia. I must be quiet and stop squeezing the past.’

‘Yes let’s not talk of the cottage or what happened there.’

‘I do need to talk about it but as you say not now.’ Agitated Callie rang a bell. ‘It’s alright Dulce will come. Go mingle with my other guests. They are all dying to talk of your meeting with His Royal Highness. Talk to them, smile and be gracious, and any goodwill you may have lost is yours again.’

The guests departing Julia took a shawl out onto the terrace. Daniel was there smoking a cigar his shirt front white against the sky and the setting sun reflected in his eyes. He saw her and threw the cigar away.

‘What a shame. You were enjoying that.’

‘Yes and I can enjoy another.’

She stood beside him. ‘What a wonderful sky.’

‘It sure is. Not as roaring as the skies over California but restful.’

‘Do you have many roaring skies in California?’

‘A thousand and one.’

‘You miss your home?’

‘I do.’

‘And yet you travel.’

‘That’s my job.’

‘What is your job, Daniel?’

‘I think of myself as a writer first and then a journalist.’

A telescope was mounted on the terrace. ‘Are you star-gazing too Daniel?’

He grimaced. ‘Not with that I’m not. Terrible cracked and rusty, you wouldn’t see much more than fog through that. ’

‘I have one that belonged to my husband. He loved to watch the skies and would probably have enjoyed California roars.’

‘He travelled?’

‘Not as much as he would’ve liked yet I think where dreams and the skies and telescopes are concerned I believe Owen travelled a billion miles.’

‘Are you recovered from this afternoon and that unfortunate occurrence?’

‘Poor Freddie. I put it down to the heat and artistic temperament.’

‘I put it down to bad manners.’

‘It’s best forgotten.’

‘Yes if one can forget. It’s not the first time you’ve borne the brunt of that particular artistic temperament. I would want it to be the last. ’

Julia preferred not to discuss it. Freddie was upset, they mustn’t make too much of it. She stared down the slope. For a small place the cottage is the focus of much attention and not only now but in years gone by. What is it that makes it so? Is it the people that lived there or is the land itself a magnet for energy, magical perhaps like a fairy ring. If I were remove the cottage stone by stone would I find a mushroom circle beneath? ‘Gather here you thorny toads and elves with mischief in your fingers? Come dark spirits of the night and...!’

‘A penny for your thoughts.’ Daniel was smiling.

‘Sorry?’

‘You were a million miles away.’

‘A penny for my thoughts? I thought you Yankees dealt in cents?’

‘We do but in pennies too. So what were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking that a place can mean different things to different people.’

‘As can a word.’

Julia laughed. ‘You mean like clever?’

‘Possibly.’

‘I must say I was startled. Until today I thought clever an innocent word.’

‘Freddie Carrington is in a jam. He doesn’t know what to do with his life and looks to others for answers. It can be that way with those born into comfort.’

‘You were born into comfort.’

‘Yes and there it ended. My Pa wasn’t an easy man nor was he the kindest but he worked hard all his life and expected me to do the same.’

‘You’re not involved with the mining business?’

‘Father and I were not close. We disagreed on his treatment of my mother.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I doubt my mother says too much about that aspect of her life. Where Sam Masson is concerned she is mute. As a provider he could not be condemned. He was shrewd in business and lucky, though if he were to hear me say so he’d pull a pistol and shoot me dead. Sam didn’t believe in luck though he and his fellow investors played a game of chance every minute of every day. If he thought the risk worthwhile he’d go for it no matter how obscure but if it didn’t come good within an allotted time it was done. He lacked patience. It’s why he never came to Europe. Why stare at ruins, he’d say. I live in Philadelphia not the Roman Coliseum.’

‘So he never accompanied you abroad?’

‘No ma’am! Until we met up with the Singer-Sargents in Paris the Greville Massons were a caravan of four, me, Callie, Dulce, and Watson.’

‘Watson? Was he your man-servant?’

Daniel threw back his head and laughed. ‘I’ve no doubt if he could’ve he would. He sure was diverse. Watson was my dog and my best friend.’

‘Matty feels that way about Kaiser. He says the dog talks to him.’

‘And of course Kaiser does talk. Watson talks to me and I hope always will. Just because he’s no longer visible don’t mean he ain’t here.’

‘You loved him.’

‘I did.’ Tears sprang into Daniel’s eyes. How long since anyone asked of Watson? For the moment, overcome, he couldn’t speak. The air was filled with Watson. He swallowed. ‘Watson was my boy. I loved him and he loved me.’

Julia waited a while and then asked of John Sargent. ‘You met in Paris?’

‘Our mothers are known to one another. They share a love of Europe and of meeting new people. They shared something else, one another’s pain.’ He glanced at Julianna. ‘I guess you’ve learned a little of what went on in this house.’

‘Enough to know your mother was unhappy.’

‘It wasn’t always like that. As a girl Callie loved it here at Lansdowne. She loved England, your cottage, and the woman who taught there.’

‘Taught?’

‘Justine Newman was Callie’s governess. She and her sister Clarissa lodged in the gatehouse. Justine was a clever woman and by all accounts beautiful to look at. Mom adored her. They were as close as a girl and older woman can be but there was a problem.’

‘Henry Lansdowne.’

‘Yes. He and Callie were engaged to marry. He died during a naval exercise. A hero he went down with his ship leaving a hell of a mess here on land.’

‘Henry Lansdowne loved Justine Newman?’

‘Besotted. He wouldn’t leave her be. He always at the cottage and yet at the same time couldn’t, or wouldn’t, break his engagement with Callie.’

‘Poor Callie.’

‘Yes, because when she did finally get away from this miserable situation and to Philadelphia where she was born she walked into more misery. My father was a philanderer of the worst kind. He left a trail off emotional debris halfway across the State. Callie was drowning when she left England with only her fortune to keep her afloat. Sam Masson, ever with an eye to the future, was waiting for just such a woman.’

‘Your mother isn’t well.’

‘No and coming back here hasn’t helped.’

‘What was her hope in coming?’

‘I suppose to lay Henry Lansdowne’s ghost to rest. I was against it. She’s too old to be grubbing up the past. I begged her not to come or if she must then at least find another house.’

‘Why does she call it Greenfields?’

‘This land was once owned by the Greenfield family. They were here long before the Lansdownes. Over time Greenfield softened to Greville. In the 1600s when pilgrims left Plymouth for the New World there were Grevilles among them. Our branch of family settled in Philly and made a good life.’

‘You don’t like it here.’

‘I do not.’ He sighed. ‘I have borne these two houses and all they mean on my shoulders the whole of my life. Living here is my idea of hell.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be Julianna! Good came of it! You came! I wanted to tell you of Callie’s obsession because I knew despite her hopes it would become a problem. I thought of writing but didn’t know how to set such a puzzle down in words that would make sense. A seventy-five year-old Philadelphia socialite shinning over walls to pilfer daises, where’s the sense in that?’

‘Who does she steal from, Daniel? And who does she give back to when she returns the plants?’

‘The same person, I guess, Justine Newman.’

‘The business with Susan Dudley didn’t help.’

‘It was never going to be helped. Forty years my mother’s yearned over this house and what happened here. Forty years hogtied to a selfish man. Then Sam died. Suddenly she’s free and what she wants is Greenfields.’

‘And the cottage.’

‘That above all! To own the cottage would be to own Justine Newman and by definition Henry Lansdowne. ’

Both stared out into the night, and then Daniel turned to Julianna.

‘Earlier we talked of words meaning different things. Can I ask what you made of my words in the Marquee today, my clumsy declaration?’

‘Was it a declaration?’

‘It was and one I’d repeat again right now if you’d let me.’

‘I beg you let me think on it awhile, Daniel. I am unsure of myself and my life. But do let us take Matty on that picnic.’

‘We’re still going to the Fens?’ His face cleared. ‘I’m glad. I did wonder if all this talk might’ve put thoughts of fun aside.’

‘I’d like to go as will Matty when...! Oh look!’ She leaned forward. ‘There’s someone by the cottage wall, a prowler!’

A shadowy figure, tall and remote, stood by the gate.

‘I see him but I don’t reckon him a prowler. It’s the fellow from the village, the one Matty calls Wolf. I’ve seen him here before. He checks the doors.’

‘Ah yes.’ Julia’s chest hurt. ‘That would be Luke Roberts.’

‘He seems anxious for your security.’

‘That’s probably because there’s been trouble of late, someone tapping on the door at night and the greenhouse broken into.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

‘Neither do I. In fact I think it’s time I went home. Walk me down, Daniel.’

Red Riding Hood needn’t have worried about encountering the Wolf. Hearing their approach Luke Roberts had slipped into shadows. Daniel doesn’t know the fellow but has seen his work on the cottage the restoration first class. Hard worker and talented, were he Stateside he’d be a millionaire. Pity Callie didn’t employ Luke Roberts. He could fix the plumbing in the North Wing and cure damp in the East. But then the house will never be right. You can scrape rot from walls but not from flesh. Daniel feels a kinship with the Wolf both men on the outside of Julianna’s heart and wanting in.