Paying Guests (13 page)

‘Oh, I think money is possible,’ she said and leaned a little closer. ‘But, Duff, I would not have hesitated had you asked me this a few weeks ago. I would have seen this as an opportunity for you to have an enjoyable new experience amongst agreeable people who – and much as I find it distasteful to discuss such things, I won’t deny that knowing good families is of importance in a young man’s life – who could be of help to you in future times. But that was before –’

‘Yes, Mamma?’ He looked at her cheerfully, as though the boy who had wept on her and talked so wildly of his confused emotions had been a total stranger of whom he knew nothing.

‘Before you drank too much and told me so many unpleasant things!’ she snapped and Mr Gee lifted his head momentarily from his hand of bezique and looked inquisitively across the room, and at once she lowered her voice again. ‘I understood you to be miserable about this Patrick and –’

‘Oh, Ma, you mustn’t pay attention to what a chap says in his cups!’ Duff said. ‘Silas will tell you that! The oddest things appear in a man’s speech when he is full of brandy.’

‘Oh!’ She was taken aback. ‘You have talked to Mr Geddes about – about Patrick?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He leaned back in his chair and stretched a little, clearly comfortable and at ease with himself. ‘One morning, riding – I found I was telling him how captious Patrick can be, and how fickle a friend, but he assured me that I was fretting foolishly, for all aristocrats are like Patrick, he says. It comes of being bred from their
cradles to too much deference. They expect everyone to do as they wish and don’t know how to behave when people stand up to them. Well, Patrick will have to learn from me that it is no bad thing to be baulked occasionally. Silas said I could be the best friend he ever had if I am able to rub off some of his grandeur and bring him to the level of ordinary mortals. Of course he will one day be the duke, but that does not mean he cannot learn now to tolerate the views of others. That’s what Silas said and I agree with him. So I was glad when the invitation came, for it will give me another chance to show Patrick how to behave and Silas said that could be the most useful thing I could possibly do.’ And he looked over his shoulder at Silas at the bezique table and grinned, and Silas grinned companionably back and said to Mr Gee, ‘My trick, partner, and I think my game. And I have honours too.’

‘So you win,’ Mr Gee said philosophically. ‘And I must go to bed if I am to be fit for tomorrow. Big day in court, you know.’ He looked self-importantly at Silas, trying to imply he would be in court personally rather than scribbling furiously at his desk as usual, and got to his feet. ‘Thank you for the game, sir. Good night to you all.’

He bowed to the company and went, and it seemed a signal for the rest of them for the Graylings got to their feet, Mrs Grayling wrapping up the
petit point
that she carried about with her and fussed over but never seemed to finish, and were followed by the Misses K and F and Miss Barnetsen, talking in furious whispers with their heads close together. Miss Barnetsen went off in an apparent huff, the other two close behind her, and then the American elders yawned widely and insisted that their young ones also made an end to the evening, greatly to the chagrin of Mr Hancock and Mr Cumming. So the room emptied until only Tilly and Duff remained, together with Mr Geddes who was sorting the bezique cards into their separate packs rather slowly. That he was waiting to talk to Tilly alone was quite obvious to her.

It seemed to be obvious to Duff too, for he reached over and swept the pieces off the backgammon board. ‘Enough for tonight, I think, Ma, hmm? You’ve been very busy today and must be tired.
I shall be away to my bed, then. I have a new book I want to read and it’s more pleasant to read in bed than anywhere. Good night, Silas. Shall we ride as usual, then?’

‘Indeed we shall,’ Silas said heartily. ‘Goodnight, Duff.’ They exchanged a glance that Tilly saw as conspiratorial and Duff bent and kissed her cheek and was gone.

‘Mr Geddes, I wish you would not encourage Duff in – in the things in which you encourage him,’ she said sharply and he smiled.

‘Oh? And what might that be? Riding? But he enjoys it so and so do I. I thought he was benefiting in his health from the regular exercise – I know I am – and he seems to enjoy discussing matters of interest with me. He is so taken with the new ideas that interest me, Mrs Quentin, that it is a pleasure to talk to him. A wise head on young shoulders, your son.’

‘That’s as may be,’ she said. ‘But –’ How could she explain what it was that was worrying her about Duff? She could not find the words. No woman could.

‘If your fear is that his attachment to this schoolfellow is an unnatural one,’ Mr Geddes said in a quiet voice, ‘do let me assure you that such anxieties are groundless.’

Her head shot up and she stared at him with wide eyes. ‘Sir?’

‘Oh, come. Let us behave like friends and discuss the undiscussable. Which is an absurd notion in itself for how can any human behaviour be undiscussable? Silence causes all of us more anxiety than honest talk ever could. So let us be direct, not to say blunt about it. You fear unnatural vice has touched Duff. I can assure you it has not. He has talked to me easily while we have been riding and has come to regard me perhaps in the light of a much older brother. I understand the state of his mind and feelings, for I was a boy too, of course. A while ago now, but I remember it well enough! He is simply going through the experience of hero-worship, my dear Mrs Quentin, and all the horrors of jealousy and yearning that go with that. To make too much of it might well convert it all into something more than it should be. I would most earnestly advise you to stop worrying. You have a fine lad there in Duff, and he should give you no anxiety.’

She had been staring at him throughout his long speech and now she said a little unsteadily, ‘Indeed, Mr Geddes. You
do
espouse the new ideas! To speak so easily of such matters is – is –’ She stopped, lost for words, and he came a little closer and smiled down at her.

‘My dear Tilly – and I hope we have reached that stage of a friendship wherein it is possible for me to speak to you so intimately – my dear Tilly, surely I have sufficiently explained myself to you in the past days while we have come to know each other? I have made it very plain that I value liberty above all, and liberty includes – indeed is rooted in – freedom to speak one’s mind, however different a mind it might be from that of the majority. I believe that silence in such matters as these most intense of mankind’s emotions is more than illiberal. I believe it actually shackles us cruelly and causes much unhappiness. See how distressed you are because Duff is invited to spend a wholesome holiday with his friend! You would deprive him of good country air and country sport for fear of some unspeakable emotion. But once speak of that emotion and does it not diminish its apparent horror and become ordinary and indeed fully natural?’

‘Hero-worship, natural?’ she said, still uncertain, quite unable to collect her thoughts into any coherent argument against him, for he was standing so close that she could smell the bay rum on his shaven cheeks and feel his breath warm on her forehead. She quite liked both sensations and that in itself was disconcerting.

‘Of course it is,’ he said firmly. ‘Did I not tell you that I too experienced it?’ He laughed reminiscently. ‘A rather swaggerish fellow called Hackforth as I recall. He was known at school as Chopper, of course, and how we young ones adored him! Like them, I dreamed of his attentions and yearned for marks of his interest – but I assure you now that I am anything but unnatural.’

It seemed as though he had moved even closer to her, though she had not seen him move, and she found herself breathing a little more rapidly and decidedly unevenly. ‘Indeed, Mr Geddes?’

‘I wish you would call me Silas. I am surely your friend by now? We have spent so much time talking so agreeably – please to call
me by my name. It would give me much pleasure to hear it on your lips.’

‘Very well. Er – Silas,’ she said and felt herself redden. ‘So – so you think I should let Duff go to Leicestershire?’

‘Of course.’ His voice was low and soft and she could not take her eyes from his face, and he smiled and bent a little closer, and this time she did see the movement and managed, somehow, to galvanize her muscles and pull away. It must have been her imagination, of course, but it had seemed to her he was about to attempt to kiss her. A foolish notion, naturally, but still –

‘Well, if you are sure, Mr – Silas, I will tell Duff so and make all arrangements. I must thank you for your interest in Duff.’

‘I am as interested in his mother,’ Silas said, still in that low voice, but this time she did not look at him and felt herself able to pull away from his spell, as she now found herself describing it. How could she have allowed herself to be so close to him that she had the notion he might actually kiss her? She scolded herself inside her head, even as she collected her reticule from her chair and turned to make her way to the door.

‘I thank you for your interest,’ she repeated and somehow managed to escape, leaving him in the drawing room, standing looking after her as she went towards the stairs with as steady a step as she could muster, trying to look her usual unruffled self.

It was not at all easy.

BY THE TIME Duff had been fully equipped for his visit to Leicestershire – an operation that took three trips to the best gentleman’s outfitters in Regent Street and rather more of Tilly’s sum set aside for his clothes than she would have expected – everyone was quite exhausted.

Despite her lingering uncertainty about the advisability of the visit, which had been only partly assuaged by a charming letter of invitation sent by Patrick’s older sister, who, she said, always dealt with her father the duke’s hospitality, Tilly was determined that her boy should not be at a disadvantage among the people with whom he would be spending so long a time. She worked hard to ensure that he had precisely what he would require in terms of a shooting jacket with leather shoulders, a pair of breeches with leggings and shooting boots together with a game bag, and a set of guns which she hired from Purdey’s in South Audley Street, while Eliza, in a fever of activity, set about laundering his linen. She would not let Mrs Skinner, their usual washerwoman, do it, any more than she ever let her wash Tilly’s chemises and shifts; as far as Eliza was concerned this was far too delicate a job for such a person, and so she set to with boiling copper and blue bag, starch and goffering iron and worked wonders in terms of snowy shirts and perfect collars and cuffs.

Duff, in the middle of it all, seemed sublimely unaware of how much extra work his holiday was creating, and went riding each morning with Silas as usual, an activity which both now regarded as
an essential part of their day, and spent his afternoons lounging in the garden on a bath chair reading one of the many books which Silas lent him.

Tilly was reading too, or trying to, at the end of each day, when she went wearily to bed. The excessively warm weather of these dying days of August left the air still and exhausted after dinner, and few of the guests chose to spend much time in the drawing room once the coffee and tea trays had been cleared. They went for strolls in the dark blue twilight to get the breath of coolness that came at last when the sun went down, and went early to their beds, and that was a relief for Tilly. To be sociable each evening was part of the work of a guest house hostess, she knew, and generally she had no objection to it, but at present, she was glad to be free of it.

She would settle down with one of Silas’s books, stretching out on her bed with only a sheet to cover her and wearing her thinnest muslin nightgown unbuttoned at the neck, and direct the light of her oil lamp so that she had the greatest possible illumination with the least possible heating from the chimney. She would try to concentrate on what she read, for she knew that Silas would be eager to discuss the book with her as soon as he had the opportunity, but it was almost impossible. Within a very short time she would doze off and wake at two or three o’clock in the morning to find herself lying with her neck twisted awkwardly and the lamp streaking its glass chimney black with soot; and would blow it out and then lie awake, wondering why she could not recapture the delicious sleepiness of earlier in the evening. And then would doze off at last, to wake as the light crept into her room in the early morning, as weary as she had been when she went to bed.

The truth of the matter was that however hard she tried to convince herself that there was no harm in Duff’s visit to his friend Patrick and that he would enjoy it and return happily, there was still this lingering worm of doubt that crept in and out of her thoughts each day. It was all very well for Silas to assure her that her boy was like all other boys and that she had no need to fret over him. He had not sat in the drawing room and listened to Duff and watched him sob his heart out.

What was it that he had said? ‘I do love him – he can tease and torment me to his heart’s content and I will do nothing to retaliate.’ And when she had asked him if he had done anything shameful, he had blushed scarlet and told her she understood nothing.