Fragile Blossoms (32 page)

‘Oh Hugh! I didn’t know.’

‘I don’t know why you didn’t. Everyone else knows. My situation is common among many such households, particularly the lesser titled. People outside think we do well to serve the Household. Some do well, those that crawl on their belly or have the good fortune to sniff out the odd Gunpowder Plot. I don’t crawl on any part of me and though I served in the Hussars for years I’ve never come across a would-be Guy Faulkes. So here I am an impoverished bugger about to be cast out on my ear.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘You see now why I’m offering. I have a small pension, not much, but enough to contribute to our means. Oh do say you’ll think about it? Life with me would have advantages. Imagine the young bucks who’d try their luck thinking you an old man’s darling? You could have your pick. I wouldn’t complain. In fact I’d have a whale of time sorting the wheat from chaff. You’d be safe. No one would dare beset your name with me in tow. We Fitzwilliam are poor as church mice but have a lineage harking back to the eleventh century. And you must admit Lady Julianna Beresford Fitzwilliam has quite a ring.’

Then he’d smiled, God Love him, with his dyed eyelashes and single blonde curl stuck to his bald pate. ‘But don’t worry, my dear. If you truly can’t bear the idea I have a couple of aging Ladies of the Bed-Chamber in tow with hefty bank balances and meagre hopes. One of them will do at a pinch.’

Julia is determined to leave Norfolk. Like Hugh she is weary of toeing the Society line and Seeing and being Seen. Egypt scraped at her soul and made her look again at her life. These days she’s never at the cottage and it tells, Matty more familiar with Mrs Mac than with his mother. He’s with her now out in the snow, Matty squealing and Ben Faulkner laughing, a family.

Ben came to the parlour door with questions. ‘Matty has talent, Mrs Dryden. It matters now what he does. He can remain as he is, a talented child, or he, and you, can assert discipline and he becomes an artist.’

Mr Faulkner is not the only one to take an interest in Matty and his music, the Royal College of Music suggested by the Prince of Wales. ‘He should be heard, Ju-ju, and not by some determined lady pounding an out-of-tune piano in the school gym,’ he said. ‘Matty needs the right ear. I shall look into it.’

At the time Julia thought nothing of the suggestion. Beset as Bertie is by problems personal and nationwide a little boy and his education can hardly signify. She had forgotten how kind he can be. That same week she received a call from the Royal College. They were met there by an ancient German gentleman, Herr Ernst Pauer, a retired tutor. He listened while Matty played and then looked at Matty’s hands stretching fingers and manipulating his knuckles. He then asked why a piano and not another instrument.

Matty said he was there when Mr Doodle was playing.

Herr Pauer had frowned. ‘Mr Doodle?’

Julia had grimaced. ‘He means Mr Faulkner, his piano tutor.’

Matty had nodded. ‘I saw the keys spring up and down and I remembered.’

‘What did you remember?’ asked Herr Pauer.

‘I remembered making them spring higher.’

‘And when was that?’

‘When I was that other boy.’

Herr Pauer had smiled. ‘It is my belief we choose our destiny before we occupy the flesh. Your son has chosen well. He knows a pianist doesn’t need vocal chords. The hands, if they are the right hands, will speak for him.’ He’d held Matthew’s hands. ‘These hands shall speak for the Lord God Almighty.’

Julia came away from the interview bewildered. Matty took all in his stride and when questioned later as to whether he’d like to go to such a place to study he shrugged, ‘can I take Kaiser with me?’

The dog is everything to him. People come and go. Ben and Mrs Mac, Daniel Masson, he misses them all, but it’s the dog that holds him. Seeming to know each other’s thoughts they have a close if worrying relationship. Knowing the brevity of life, and Kaiser getting older, Julia tried to prepare Matty for the inevitable. ‘What a dear dog,’ she said. ‘We’ll miss him when he’s gone.’

‘What do you mean gone?’ Matty flashed a look. ‘Where is he going?’

‘I meant that Kaiser is getting older and one day will leave.’

Matty’s eyes filled with tears. ‘What day will that be?’

Having got into it Julia didn’t know how to get out without making things worse. ‘Well the day that he is too old or perhaps too unwell to live.’

‘You mean like when Papa died?’

‘Well... yes.’

‘Can I have an egg for my breakfast?’

‘What!’

‘Can I have toast soldiers with my egg?’

Such a switch Julia thought he’d misunderstood and later brought the subject round again. ‘Shall we get a puppy? Then when Kaiser does go you won’t miss him so much.’

‘I shall miss him but he’ll be with Papa and so I’ll see them both.’

Matty’s certainty of Mister Wolf being one day in their life is Julia’s best, and worse, reason for leaving Norfolk. He adores the man. It was Luke who gave him Kaiser. He looks to the dog and sees Luke and truth to tell Julia does the same. Right now Kaiser’s on the landing. She can’t hear him but knows he’s there. A quiet dog he makes no sound, only a gentle touch of his nose tells you he’s there. It’s another reason to leave. Many months have passed since Luke set foot in the cottage but like Kaiser he’s always here, the bond between him and Matty strong. Julia knows she can move house and miles between them the bond will remain. She’d sooner not break it. That her son loves and is loved in return can only be good, however such ties blind the eyes to other possibilities. Daniel Masson likes Matty. He would make an excellent father, and California, she has heard, is an exciting State. It is surely a place where one could be happy and a child could grow, and where one could be safe and no swishing of tails and thought of the dead.

With that in mind Julia thought to try pouring oil on existing troubled waters between herself and a possible future mother-in-law and sent Maggie with a note inviting Callie Masson to tea.

Callie wouldn’t come to the cottage. She said her cold prevented her.

Julia went but didn’t plan to stay. She’s heard Joe Carmody is ill and earlier went to enquire but was told he was too ill to see her.

From one sick person she came to another. Callie looked dreadful. She’s lost a great deal of weight her skin seeming to hang on her bones.

‘Does she sleep any better at night?’ Julia asked Dulce.

‘She wanders,’ said Dulce, ‘but I’m gonna fix that. I’ve brewed a sleeping draught and plan to give it to her tonight. If she don’t sleep, and me for that matter, anything can happen.’

‘Do you not get help from the maids?’

‘I don’t ask. I have been with Mizz Callie a long time. It’s too private a thing to share with anyone but family. I wish Mister Daniel were here.’

‘He’ll be here soon.’

‘I don’t know that he will.’

‘It’s Christmas. He wouldn’t leave his mother alone at such a time.’

Dulce shrugged. ‘The old Daniel never would but I’m not sure of the new.’

Dulce thinks Daniel has changed, his mother suggests the same.

‘He was a nice boy when he was young but he’s not so nice now. The war’s changed him. But then,’ Callie stared into the distance, ‘war changes everyone. It changed Henry. He was fine as Midshipman and then there was some war in a Godforsaken heathen country and he came back as an officer and too big for his boots.’

‘I believe you said you were childhood sweethearts.’

Callie snorted. ‘Children, yes, his parents close to mine, but sweethearts no. I couldn’t stand the boy. He thought too much of himself.’

‘Was he handsome?’

‘Oh yes, smooth as silk and twice as glossy. A favourite among the Aunts and Uncles he knew the right thing to say. He was a courtier, as quick with a kiss of the hand as I was with a curtsey. Handsome is as handsome does and though smooth on the outside on the inside where it matters he was hard as stone.’

Callie seems calmer. Reluctant to do or say anything that might change that Julia steered conversation away from the past and toward the forthcoming celebrations and the Nativity Play.

‘What is Matty to be?’ asked Callie.

‘A shepherd, I think.’

‘I should like to see that,’ said Callie wistfully, ‘but can’t manage that cold church. Do you suppose the children would bring the play here?’

‘I don’t see why not. Would you like me to enquire?’

‘I sure would!’ Callie’s face was bright. ‘It would do this old house good to hear children’s voices instead of adult squawk.’

‘I’ll speak to the Rector and see what he says.’

‘Tell him it’s a tradition! Say that St Bedes were singing carols Christmas morn here in the Hall long before he was born. Tell him I’m a wealthy woman and that it won’t hurt him, or his parish, to keep that tradition.’

It wasn’t long before Callie returned to the past. She spoke of ‘glossy’ Captain Henry Lansdowne and his passion for Justine and how things were not as anyone had imagined. ‘He wouldn’t leave her alone. He’d call all hours of the day and night. He once put a ladder to her window and climbed up. She was offended. She said his behaviour was not of a gentleman and it wouldn’t have happened were she other than a paid employee.’

‘So it was he who caused the split.’

‘It was.’ Callie nodded. ‘I learned that a little too late. I’d always assumed it was her, that she’d led him on. I was angry and I wasn’t thinking right. I went to Aunt Maynard, who was the big gun around here. I accused Justine of leading him astray, but knowing Henry was already very much astray I didn’t stop there.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I said she made improper advances to me.’

‘Oh Callie!’

‘I know.’ Callie buried her head in her hands. ‘I was a child, a jealous, foolish child. It was that damned spy-glass. It’s like life; you only get a bit of the picture and usually the one you want to see. I spied on them and thought the worst. I was wrong about that and in the end I was wrong about Henry. He wasn’t the oaf I pictured him to be. They tried to throw her out, to beat her and her sister out of town but couldn’t. He’d left her the gate-house.’

‘And she stayed. My word, that can’t have been easy.’

‘Her sister Clarissa wasn’t well. As a child she’d suffered a bone disease that made her awkward, hands like shovels and shoulders like a man. It’s likely Justine stayed for Clarissa but then again maybe she have dug in her heels. She knew she hadn’t done wrong and wouldn’t be pushed. And they did push! Though not able to throw her out the Aunts, the Maynards and the Grevilles, made her life difficult. They cut her from society, made her a pariah and ruined her name and her beautiful gardens.’

‘Ah, that’s why she built the wall!’

‘Yes. It was Easter time. She was in Japan hunting plants. The Aunts hired a gang of bully-boys from Ipswich. They cut down trees and bushes, smashed her greenhouse and everything in it. They didn’t go so far as to set fire to the house but they did everything else. They killed the birds on her pond and the pigeons in her loft, and not knowing the truth I helped them.’

Julia could only shake her head.

‘Horrible,’ whispered Callie. ‘In the morning when I saw what we’d done I felt sick. She came home and built the wall. I never spoke to her again until the day I left for America when being the fool that I was I must have the last word. I went to see her. That’s when she said he was the pursuer not her.’

‘And what about Henry when he saw the destruction?’

‘He never got to see it, at least not this side of the grave. He was dead, drowned when those ships collided. I was thankful and sorry for that, sorry he never got to witness the destruction he caused and glad he was dead.’

‘You don’t mean that, Callie! You can’t be glad he died.’

‘I was glad. I was delighted. I felt it was God’s Hand that thrust him under the waves. He ruined my life. But for him I never would’ve left Norfolk and gone to Philadelphia where for the next forty years I was tied to another selfish man.’

‘Good things came from those forty years. You have Daniel.’

‘True, I have Daniel.’

‘And he is a good son!’

‘He is a good son. He is my pride and joy, but also, though he’s the last to see it, he is his father’s son and therefore his future happiness in doubt.’

‘How is that?’

‘Samuel Masson was a gambler. Bankrolled by me he invested in Comstock and did well because he knew when to bet and when not. Daniel doesn’t study mining or money markets but gambles just the same and the stakes even higher. He loves danger. He says not, to hear him talk covering those Chinese rebellions and the Boer War is a grind. Don’t be fooled, he loves being in the thick of it.’

‘And yet he seems a quiet man and steady. Matty really likes him.’

‘Yes but not enough, Julianna! Neither of you like him enough! If you did he wouldn’t be in South Africa messing with guns and things! I’m not blaming you. As I said he takes after his father. Dulce saw it straight away. It took me a while. His father made plenty money but lost as much paying off enraged fathers. When he marries, if he marries, Daniel won’t be unfaithful. You won’t catch him risking reputation for some little dolly. He’s too much of a Greville high-hat. But free, unbound, and rich of blood, he’ll risk the world to be different. Before he came to Norfolk, or rather before he saw you, he was champing at the bit, an explorer in the mould of Cortes.’

Julia nodded. ‘I heard him once described in that manner.’

‘And whoever said it was right! Shake a red rag under his nose and he’ll charge. He needs to settle while he can. Left to his own devices he’ll end up a monk or a martyr. Why do you think I was so keen to get you together?’

‘I didn’t think you were.’

Callie sighed. ‘I was, Anna, at first very keen. But a lot of water has rolled under the bridge of late and most of it poled by your friend, Eve. I told you once before Daniel can be pernickety. He is proud and resents what he considers a lack of proper pride. I am sorry to say, my dear, where my son and his prejudices are concerned Lady Eve Carrington has done you no good.’

Julia left soon after. Furious, she brooded over Callie’s suggestion. So Daniel disapproves of her association with Eve? She’s not surprised. She remembers Russell Square. He came with John Singer Sargent. John was his usual affable self but Daniel, though polite, was decidedly cool with Evie and made little attempt to hide his scorn of Freddie. Well where friendship with the Carringtons is concerned he can set aside his scruples. Since the night of the séance there’s been no word from either. Whatever they had before, the three of them, whatever was shared, laughter and pain, it is over. Daniel Masson has nothing to resent. It is Julia now who is resentful of him.