Rustication (8 page)

Then Mother arrived. She said sharply:
Mrs Yass, aren’t you preparing dinner?

The woman looked at her impertinently and, turning like a great horse reaching the end of the furrow, lumbered toward the kitchen.

I don’t want you to keep her from her work, Richard
, Mother said.

(In fact, her dinner turned out to be every bit as revolting as Betsy’s efforts. I don’t know why the mater has hired a cook who can’t cook. And frankly we couldn’t afford her even if she was a female Soyer.)

11 o’clock.

Twenty minutes ago I went into the parlour and found Effie sitting on the sopha, her eyes brimming with tears. She turned her head away. I asked her what the matter was and she responded ferociously:
Do you think I can be happy living like this? Wearing these patched and darned old dresses
.
Seeing nobody from one week to the next
.

I said it was hard for me as well.

She said indignantly:
You were supposed to rescue us from this. To get your degree and start working for Uncle Thomas
.

I defended myself and at last she shouted:
Just go away, can’t you
.

· · ·

I wonder. Is she still nursing a broken heart?

Midnight.

∑

Mother must not know about poor Edmund and his damnable family of bloodthirsty leeches. It’s not the money his family is concerned with. They want revenge.

· · ·

I am haunted by the image of her sweet face, her serenity, her pale silence.
Oh beautiful Enid, as lovely as your name
.

· · ·

Dear Uncle Thomas,

I decline your offer since I have no wish to become a superior shop-keeper.

· · ·

Where does that great white slug have her quarters? That huge peeled potato in its bed of pastry.

· · ·

I can hear my own blood coursing through my veins.

· · ·

After so long—what is it? nearly a week?—it is almost like the first time. Everything I see has meaning even if it slips from my grasp as if I were clutching at curlicues of mist. I float among hanging shrouds of cloud looking down at houses like toys scattered on a green carpet. I perch in a tree hundreds of feet above the ground. The startled birds fly from me. The moonlight is like cloudy milk poured into a glass bowl full of water.

· · ·

Frozen grass. Tiny green pieces of ice. As my foot comes down they seem to shatter.

I raise my eyes to the vast dome above us sprinkled with white specks and I laugh at the tininess of our earthbound concerns.

The pump is frozen and covered with ice like thick ropes of diamond or the crystal branches of a magic tree.

· · ·

The vast pat of uncooked dough has a room beside the girl’s. Damn damn damn. I found that out when I crept past and heard a jarring symphony of flutings and rumblings as she breathed, shaking the house with each expansion of her diaphragm.

Thursday 17
^th
of December, ½ past 11.

S
lept late this morning and felt terrible. I will be better in the future. The cold was so fierce that I did not want to get out of my warm bed. When I came down to breakfast Euphemia stood up and walked out.

Mother shook her head at me and she was as angry as I have ever seen her. She said:
What occurred last night must not happen again
.

I had to confess that I remembered very little.

She said:
You were blundering about in the night and you went out into the yard half-dressed in the bitter cold and shouting like a madman. From now on you are permitted only one glass
.

When Euphemia had departed for Lady Terrewest’s house, Mother told me there were things she wanted to say to me. I seated myself on the sopha beside her while she picked up her embroidery frame and then, her voice trembling, began:
Richard, you should be aware that my life has seldom been free of cares. Your father wasn’t an easy person to live with. If he sometimes seemed harsh towards you, it was because he hoped so much that you would succeed in life. All the more because of his own disappointments
.

(I thought:
Here comes the bishopric
.)

He never obtained his mitre, as you know. That’s why it was so important to him to see you launched on a successful career in the Church
.
I know that was never your wish and so we’ll say no more about it. But now you have to decide what you do want to do in life. You must write to Thomas and apologise for your conduct and say that if his generous offer is still open, you gratefully accept it
.

What, Mother? Am I to grovel for favours from a man who hated his own brother and did him harm?

Don’t say that, Richard. He has paid your Cambridge expenses. Would he have done that if he hated your father? It’s a more complicated story than you’ve ever been told. The reason why he and your father quarrelled was because of our marriage
.

I know he was against it but I don’t understand why
.

I’ll tell you
, she said.
When your father and I became engaged, my aunts and uncles were horrified. They looked down on him and Thomas because their father had been nothing more than a lawyer’s clerk
.

But didn’t your father defend you?

She fumbled nervously at her embroidery for a moment and then said:
He was not in good health by that date
.

I began to have the strangest feeling. Mother was holding something back. Even distorting the truth.

She said:
But he gave your father and me a lease on this house for twenty-one years
.

But you said it was yours! That your father left it to you
.

He did but that was under the will that Cousin Sybille is disputing. Once the suit is settled, the house is mine
.

If we win it! But what if we don’t? When does the lease expire?

Falteringly she said:
Next December
.

Then if we lose, we will have nowhere to live. What does Boddington say?

She looked down and mumbled:
He’s worried about the costs
.

How high are they?

I’ve paid a hundred pounds so far
.

A hundred pounds! Mother, the suit could ruin us! I should talk to Boddington about it
.

She put down her work:
No! I forbid you. Don’t meddle in it
.

I’ve never understood why you had to go to court to get what was yours under your father’s will
.

She didn’t respond.

· · ·

I’m pretty certain that the man who broke Effie’s heart is the earl’s nephew—no less than the heir to his title and to his whole estate. Did Effie come so close to becoming a countess?

4 o’clock.

It was a fine frosty morning and I had to get out into the fresh air. I passed the village and wandered on and rather to my surprise found myself in Lady Terrewest’s village of Thrubwell. I thought I might as well look at where she lives, so I asked my way and was soon standing outside a tall old redbrick house. It looked joyless and grim.

Knowing that Effie would have to leave soon, I positioned myself a little way along the road behind the stout trunk of a tree. Sure enough, after half an hour she emerged from the house and, staying a long way behind her, I followed her all the way home. She went into the shop for a few minutes but apart from that she spoke to nobody.

After luncheon I decided to extend the palm of friendship. I said to her:
Shall we play a duet? I’ve got my flute now
.

She said:
You can’t keep time
.

8 o’clock.

I went into the parlour just now and found Mother sitting on the sopha coughing badly. When she left the room I noticed that she had dropped a handkerchief on the floor. There were specks of blood on it. Is she seriously unwell? Is that what Euphemia was implying? If so, perhaps that is the explanation of the towels and basins that I found when I arrived and that vanished so quickly.

9 o’clock.

Mother and Effie had another argument—raised voices and doors slamming—but by the time Miss Bittlestone arrived they had managed to patch together at least the semblance of good relations.

Our guest—our first ever in this house!—was welcomed and I saw my mother slip into the role she had played so often in the old days when she presided around a tea-table encircled by the wives of senior clerics: charming, attentive, even amusing. Wielding her sugar-tongs like a rapier, as Father used to say.

I was delegated to open the door and lead the old woman with all proper ceremony into the parlour. It was cold even though Betsy had been instructed to build up the fire in readiness for our guest.

I had barely got the front-door open before the old biddy’s tongue was rattling away. We learned that Miss Bittlestone is the only child of an impoverished clergyman who was Quance’s curate in Cheltenham. When the Quances moved here about three years ago, she was “so sweetly” invited to come and live near them.

Yes, to become an unpaid nanny and chaperone!

The tea—to which I suspect she is unaccustomed—loosened her tongue and she informed us that the Rector inherited rather a lot of money recently. So Enid is an heiress and therefore has a fair chance of scooping an earl.

She hinted that Davenant Burgoyne was on the point of proposing marriage and gleefully revealed that the Lloyds were furious that their own daughter had seen the prize snatched from her grasp.

When the bones of that had been sucked dry, Mother asked:
Now Mrs Paytress is a friend of the Lloyds, is she not?

Ah, Mrs Paytress
, said Miss Bittlestone with the relish of a hungry diner seeing a new dish approaching.
Now there is a lady about whom there is much speculation. She has almost wilfully excited curiosity. She brought her own servants with her and none of them will reveal the smallest parcel of information about her. She positively defies her neighbours not to be suspicious. And there are many things to be curious about. Odd comings and goings in carriages late at night. Unearthly cries of rage or pain at all hours
.

We savoured this juicy mouthful together in silence. Then Mother turned to me and said:
That reminds me, Richard, that we promised to return her umbrella. Will you do it now, please?

I pointed out that I had not finished my cup of tea and was given a reprieve.

This was my chance to find out something.

Miss Bittlestone
, I asked,
the earl’s nephew is his heir, is he not?

The Honourable Mr Davenant Burgoyne
, she confirmed with a sort of verbal curtsy. She strews titles and dignities like a maiden throwing blossoms round a maypole.

I went on:
Now suppose, just for the sake of the argument, that Mr Davenant Burgoyne dies without leaving an heir
. . .

The old lady gave a little scream—a stylised sketch of outraged horror which I accepted as a sacrifice to the proprieties which was the price of admission to the raree-show of speculation into which I was luring her and after a moment I carried on:
In that case, to whom would the earldom and the fortune descend?

Oh, Master Shenstone
, she said with her hand on her heart.
What a dreadful question. And especially after that lamentable incident in which poor Mr Davenant Burgoyne was nearly killed
.

You mean the accident?
I asked.

She looked at me slyly.
I mean his injury, Master Shenstone. And the answer to your question is that the earl has no other legitimate nephew. So the title would go to a distant cousin
.

And the estate—the land and money?

Miss Bittlestone lowered her eyes.
They would pass to the nearest relative of the earl
.

And who is that?
I asked.

Without looking up she muttered:
I understand that it is a connection of the earl’s late brother
.

I made one last attempt:
I can imagine that Mr Davenant Burgoyne is considered quite a prize: a title and a fortune. The earl must be concerned about his choice of a wife
.

Oh I could tell you a story about that
, Miss Bittlestone exclaimed.
About the way a ruthless family prevented a young man from marrying the girl he loved
. Then she flushed and said:
Oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned it
.

Oh you can’t titillate us so brazenly and then disappoint us
, Effie cried.

Miss Bittlestone looked coy and apprehensive at the same time:
I shouldn’t say any more. It will only get me into trouble
.

How intriguing
, Effie said with the most seductive smile.
We’re all longing to hear it
.

Well
, Miss Bittlestone said,
you must promise solemnly never to breathe a word of it to a living soul
. Then the old creature began:
A few years ago there was a family living in . . . well, let’s just say a large town in the West of England. They had a daughter of seventeen. The father was a man of the cloth—dear me! I shouldn’t have said that! Anyway, he was a vicar and there was a young man who attended his church whose family was terribly grand and when he reached his majority he would inherit a vast fortune and one day become a viscount
.

And something occurred
, Effie suggested,
between this fortunate individual and the vicar’s daughter?

They fell madly in love
, the old lady gasped.
Isn’t that romantic? But his relatives put every obstacle imaginable in their path and eventually removed him from Bath and carried him off to Brighton
.