Season of Light (10 page)

Despite his obvious interest in her sister, there were two serious flaws in Georgina’s plan. The first was Shackleford himself, whose air of world-weariness grew markedly more pronounced if his family or home were mentioned and who showed no desire to issue invitations to or even talk about Compton Wyatt. The other snag was that when Georgina had last seen Asa almost a year ago – the Warrens had to be desperately short of funds to resort to a stay at Ardleigh – her sister had given no sign whatever of altering her resolve never to marry. The thought of Asa behaving well in a London drawing room or adorning some elegant house in the country was a stretch even for Georgina’s fertile imagination. Painstaking steps would therefore have to be taken before Asa was put in the way of Harry Shackleford again.

And here Georgina had her second stroke of luck. A flood of high-born French émigrés, prominent for their aristocratic brows, aquiline noses and air of bewildered refinement, was now frequenting London soirées, having fled their homes in France. Through their attendance at church in Bloomsbury, Georgina and her husband were introduced to a Mrs Silburn, who was famous for offering accommodation to refugees of the Revolution and knew everyone. Some of these people, she said, though too noble ever to have lifted a finger, were now being forced to earn a living by teaching piano or sewing. When she reflected upon the conversation afterwards, Georgina could not remember whether it was thanks to her own inspiration, or Warren’s, or in response to Mrs Silburn’s enquiry whether they knew of anyone in need of a genteel French companion, that she had the brilliant idea of employing such a French woman herself and sending her down to Ardleigh.

Asa was mad about the French. Why not provide her with a companion who would not only tame her and teach her a spot of etiquette, but also knock some sense into her about the iniquitous state of affairs in France? The stories told by the refugees were hair-raising and Asa ought to hear them.

At Christmas, therefore, Georgina was introduced to a Madame de Rusigneux. ‘She says she’s
Madame
but we believe she’s a marquise,’ whispered Mrs Silburn.

Madame de Rusigneux proved to be every bit as intimidating as Georgina had hoped; rather short, admittedly, very thin, about thirty-two years old, with dark hair pulled back firmly from her brow, enormous tragic eyes and exquisite hands. She spoke in a very low, heavily accented voice, and when asked what accomplishments she possessed, looked so affronted that Georgina was crushed. ‘I can do everything required of a lady,’ stated Madame de Rusigneux. And then, as if to assure Georgina that she certainly had not taken offence, she added with a smile: ‘A French lady, that is.’

‘Well, my sister was born and bred a lady, but she doesn’t behave like one. Do you think you could show her how to be like you? Could you tell her the truth about your country? She needs to be shown that domesticity and decorum are what’s needed rather than revolution and bad manners.’

That evening Georgina wrote an excited, scarcely comprehensible letter to Philippa, setting out her plans for taming Asa and demanding her sister’s support in approaching their father.

Squire Ardleigh invited his youngest daughter to walk with him on the Downs, ostensibly to inspect the ewes that were close to lambing. They found the flock in good shape, grazing with their rear ends full-square to the wind. Father and daughter were so well used to each other’s company that they generally had little need for words, but on this occasion Ardleigh thrust his hands behind his back and looked at his feet. ‘So, Asa, it seems that your sisters have plans for you. They have found you a husband.’

‘What nonsense is this?’

‘Georgina says it’s practically in the bag that you will marry my heir, Mr Harry Shackleford. She says he remembers you from Paris and she’s convinced he’ll take one look at you and offer for your hand.’

‘But Father, I’ve not seen Mr Shackleford in years. Anyway, when I met him in Paris I didn’t like him at all.’

‘Georgina says every girl in London is running after him. How could you resist such a scheme, Asa?’ Although he was smiling, her father wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘Your sisters are adamant that you should marry someone and Shackleford seems to me as good as any – indeed, better than most, given that he’s to have Ardleigh.’

‘I’m happy as I am. Besides, you need me.’

Her father thrust his hands deep into his pockets. ‘Give it some consideration, my Asa, if not this Shackleford, then someone else. I’ve provided very badly for you. I would hope that Philippa might take you in after I’m gone but one can never be sure. I’d rather see you settled with a husband of your own. And if the man in question happened to be my heir, so much the better. Wouldn’t you love to keep Ardleigh?’

From their vantage point they had an excellent view of their manor house nestling in the plain, its missing tiles and broken chimneys disguised by distance; the village clustered round the church with its blunt tower and graveyard speckled with tottering stones, including that of Asa’s mother.

‘You’re nowhere near death, Father. Look at you, in the pink of health. This conversation is absurd. We’ll carry on as always. And I’m certainly not marrying Shackleford.’

‘I’m afraid it’s too late for objecting to at least part of the plan. Money has been spent, or rather committed. John Morton’s money, that is.’ He took out Georgina’s most recent letter, smoothing it against the stiff sleeve of his coat. ‘Your sister says you need female influence, that you’ve gone wild what with your meetings and your lectures and your books. She’s hired you a companion.’

‘A
what
?’

‘Seems that the Warrens were at church of all places. Got a recommendation. Interviewed the woman. She’s to arrive on Friday eighth of February, by the stage. All I know is she’s a French countess or such, down on her luck.’

‘
French
.’

‘Georgina says London is littered with French gentlewomen looking for an income.’

The wind was playing havoc with Asa’s cloak and hair. ‘But Father, you hate the French.’

‘This woman is a refugee, calls herself Madame de something or other. I shall make her welcome if she turns out to be good for my Asa.’

‘What about Philippa? What does she think of all this?’

‘Philippa has persuaded Mr Morton to pay the first month’s salary. I’m to find the rest.’

‘But she’s expecting her new child in a couple of months. She’ll need me at Morton Hall.’

‘You can take the French woman with you.’

‘My brother-in-law wouldn’t let her pass through his gates. Everyone knows he’s lost all sympathy with the French. Philippa says he’s disappointed in them and believes every French person to be a potential revolutionary or spy. Father, please. Put a stop to all this before it’s too late.’

For a moment her father held her tightly and kissed her forehead. Then he pushed her away, took off his hat and thrust it back on his head, crooked. The wind struck him a slanting blow as if in punishment. His eyes were watering.

They walked on until they were high on the ridge and could see, on the other side, the long decline through yet more woodland, smallholdings and hamlets to Littlehampton, where Caroline lived, and then the sea and beyond, where water and cloud merged, the invisible France.

‘We’ll try the companion for a month, Asa. You might like a bit of female conversation. No obligation to marry anyone, eh?’

Half an hour later they were back at the manor house, where they were met at the door by their housekeeper, Mrs Dean, who’d heard from the butcher, who’d got it from his brother ridden over from Chichester, that yesterday France had opened hostilities with Great Britain and the Netherlands. The countries were now officially at war.

Madame de Rusigneux, the new companion, did not arrive in auspicious circumstances. The second Friday in February 1793 happened to be the day when the village chose to put on a charivari, or rough music as it was called by the lads responsible, on account of a tailor and his wife who had moved into Key Cottage a year ago and who kept their neighbours awake with their arguments and the hurling of pans. Both parties were to blame; the tailor because he was too weak to keep his wife quiet; she for being a foul-mouthed hoyden.

Tailor Dacre, improbably tall and thin, took absurdly short steps for his long legs when delivering work to the rectory, the farm or farther afield in Littlehampton. He was always in a hurry and had exchanged at most half a dozen words with Asa when summoned to the manor by Mrs Dean to be handed the squire’s breeches for mending or copying. His wife, a white-skinned, jutting-jawed woman with a fuzz of red hair, never acknowledged Asa when they met in the village. Straw effigies of both, the tailor clad in a petticoat and with an obscenely prominent horn tied to his forehead, his wife in trousers, were perched on a cart and paraded through the village to Key Cottage, where half a dozen or so youths clashed saucepan lids, clattered broomsticks and built a pyre on which to burn the figures. The tailor and his wife did not emerge.

Squire Ardleigh was a dozen miles away, slaughtering a deer. Asa, who had been preparing for her new companion by emptying a chest in the spare room, ran to a window overlooking the street to see what all the fuss was about.

Some of the village women were attempting to rein back the boys, but the mob went on creating a racket, kicking the door with their clogged feet and yelling insults. It seemed to Asa as she seized her best hat (with some vague idea of impressing as lady of the manor) that there was rebellion in the air, wafted across the Channel or whipped up by the prospect of war, and that it was her duty to stop this persecution, if only to prove that revolutionaries need not resort to violence but should instead use reason.

The wind that had blown all week still tormented the shrubs in the garden and worried the faulty latch on the gate. It was only a few paces to the tailor’s cottage, where the din was an assault to the ears. The boys were brawny and overbearing with loud voices and calloused hands. One of them repeatedly slammed an old cauldron against the stone step of the cottage, another kicked at the door.

‘Stop that,’ Asa shouted, but her voice was a reed compared to the clang of metal on stone, so she dashed forward and stood among the boys. They were such an odd mix of familiar and foreign: boys wearing the very same breeches, passed down from father to son, that had been part of Asa’s daily window-scape since birth; boys whom she had envied as they played outside in the dirt when Philippa used to take her visiting; boys who had sat scrubbed and resentful, Christmas and Easter, in the back pews of the church.

‘That’s enough now,’ Asa said, hands on hips, addressing Davie Woodcock, the blacksmith’s son, who was shorter than the rest but more vocal. ‘What are you thinking of?’

Davie picked up the cauldron, held it inches from Asa’s head and beat it with a chunk of metal lifted from his father’s forge. She saw both insolence and fear in his eyes. Standing between him and the door, she put her hands over her ears and shook her head. When the boys laughed reluctantly and stopped their noise she thought she had won, but in the silence she heard an ominous crackle behind her; the pyre had been lit and in a moment flames were licking obscenely round the splayed legs of the effigies. ‘Put that out at once,’ she cried. ‘Good God, we’re not pagans.’ By now help had arrived, in the form of the vicar’s gardener, a labourer or two and the blacksmith. In moments the flames had been doused, Davie clouted by his father, and the crowd dispersed, leaving Asa standing outside Key Cottage with her servants clustered a short distance away.

She hammered on the door. ‘Mr Dacre. Are you there? This is Thomasina Ardleigh. It’s quite safe to come out now.’

Not a word.

‘No need to be alarmed. Mrs Dacre, can you hear me? The boys have all gone away. Very well, you stay inside and we shall send you a dish of supper from the manor.’ She glanced round for approval but Mrs Dean was expressionless. ‘Father or I will call again in the morning.’

As she turned towards home she noticed, beyond the thinning of the smoke above the pyre, a stranger. The woman’s head was thrown back and she was staring at Asa with shocking concentration. Short and slight, she wore a dark cloak almost covering a skirt of greyish blue, and a neat straw hat fastened on abundant hair. Two travelling bags had been set down at her feet. Her cheeks were sunken, her complexion olive-tinged. It dawned on Asa that this must be her new companion, due to arrive that afternoon by stagecoach.

Asa composed herself by adjusting her hat and smoothing her skirts, then crossed the green, giving the smoking pyre a wide berth. At nearly a head taller than the stranger she felt gawky, as if her limbs had been poorly fitted to her body. ‘You are just arrived in Ardleigh?’ she said, too loud.

‘I am Madame de Rusigneux.’ The stranger’s voice was unusually low for a woman. She put out her hand, delicate as a bird’s claw.

‘My name is Thomasina Ardleigh.’ Through the softness of the woman’s glove Asa felt the shock of French blood pulsing against her fingertips; this was the first foreigner she had touched in more than four years. After her hand was released she realised that the French woman was also trembling, and who could blame her? Whatever must she think of a village – not to mention a squire’s daughter – that allowed such barbarity?

The blacksmith was ordered to carry Madame’s bags and they processed back to the house. In Ardleigh’s snug parlour Asa and the French companion faced each other, one on either side of the hearth. The subdued chatter of the servants in the hall faded; there was now just one actuality, Madame. Of her many objections to a companion, Asa had not considered the most significant of all: that Madame de Rusigneux’s arrival would tear open the wound of Asa’s separation from Didier so that it seemed like only yesterday she had left the Hôtel de Montmorency, sniffed the wet-straw stench of the sacking beneath her feet and looked frantically about in case he should come.

Madame smelt of woodsmoke, the confinement of a long journey, and the profoundly foreign musk of France. But when she smiled it was as if an entirely different person had entered the room; her eyes warmed, a dimple played beside her lip and the severe line of her cheek softened. ‘You showed much courage, mademoiselle.’