Sons of Fortune (53 page)

Outside Nora and the aunt avoided each other’s eyes.

“Not with shoulders as big as yours,” she said. “Can you change C-F-A?”

“I’ll try. What have my shoulders to do with it, Miss Sherringham? That wasn’t half bad, was it!”

“Then back A-F-D. You, dear Mr. Stevenson, are obviously…don’t take your hand away…obviously designed for action and acts of daring. Like your father. And your hand says it, too. F. See here…the strength and depth of that line? The Duke of Wellington had a line like that, you know. F sharp to A sharp. Now down to G—and that puts us in a minor key, remember. I’m a great believer in all the things our hands can tell us.” She stroked the palm of his hand with her nails. “Aren’t you?”

“There are,” he said in a warm and eager voice, “forms of belief that are more important.”

***

“Well,” the general said, “it was on the fifth of April, eighteen forty-two, you worn ’em?”

“Sir?” Caspar asked.

“You born then?”

“No, sir. A year later.”

“Goo’ go’. Strorn’ry. Well, the Khyberees had the pass blocked. Stones…mud…bushes…never saw a hike, mnhmn tjah. Hort?” He looked expectantly at Caspar.

“The port is with you, my boy,” John said.

“Oh—sorry!” Caspar wondered how long this nightmare could go on. It went on:

“Ha ha soldiers. British hool-uhhuna man great discipline. Haddthoro…honour myself to lead one party. Up scarlahinahoul. ’N turls, tell you. Got furla win shootin all round. Scattered pfff!” For some reason he then put a pineapple in the centre of the table. “General Pollock!” he said. He lifted the cloth and stood two empty wine bottles underneath. “Vloo m’nah tjichar—there!” He pointed to two other wine bottles and, in the same grandiloquent sweep of his hand, to Caspar and the cloth on his side.

Caspar lifted the cloth and pushed his two wine bottles under. “The Khyber Pass!” he said as understanding dawned.

“Strackly! ’N turls!” The general beamed. He reached past John and pushed the fruit bowl to the end of the table. “Slade! No—pwartah say? Sale! Sale under siege, erha.” He strung a handful of nuts and figs down the Khyber Pass, saying, “Convoy ah hrunns haharition, ’n turls. Must get through.”

Wineglass by finger bowl, plant pot by tangerine, the obscure geography of that remote corner of the empire as it had appeared to one of its military servants in the heat of the ambush of the fifth of April, in the year before Caspar was born, was re-created on the damasked table at Maran Hill.

Step by barely intelligible step, the Khyberees were massacred, the fort of Ali Musjid retaken, Jellalabad relieved, and Muhammad Akbar’s force of six thousand defeated. “Gobba two strn’drds by whally—not to henchman four guns. What? Most excitin’ dayyer ahife—hwa! I’ll say. ’N turls.”

He was breathing heavily, as if he had just run in with the news of the relief of Jellalabad. He looked excitedly at the remains of the four bottles and for a moment Caspar feared he was about to repeat the whole episode.

“Ah—what trade, general, is carried through the pass?” he asked quickly. “What would be its annual value?”

“Hnurgh? H’aid? Hotch no idea—snot. Snot soldier’s bizzis. ’N turls.”

John, acutely aware that the conversation had taken a not altogether happy path, said, “Shall we rejoin the ladies?” He hoped Young John had fared better.

On the way out the general lurched against the table. At the far end, Jellalahad fell heavily to the floor, smashed to pieces, and strewed its fruit and nuts far across the carpet. “Hneurygh, swami massingham,” the general said. “Yes—’n turls.”

***

“I see,” Linny Sherringham was saying at that moment. She had just stopped playing. Even her lips were drained of blood. “Yes, I think I see.” She stood up. “Well, Mr. Stevenson, do not think me insensitive to the honour you have…”

“I think it fair to add…I’m sure I may safely add, in strictest confidence…that Lord Stevenson is to have an earldom conferred upon him in the new year.”

“Yes. Ah…well, as I say, please do not think me insensitive to the honour you do me, but I fear I should prove quite incapable of living up to such towering ideals.”

“But, Miss Sherringham, you would!” Boy pleaded. His world was slipping from his grasp. He could not understand it. All the while he had spoken of his dearest dreams, she had smiled in such sweet agreement.

“I am…” She looked at his troubled eyes and almost melted. He was so handsome—how
could
he be so holy? What a waste! “I am very ordinary in my devotions. Very ordinary, you understand. I could not spin them out above ten minutes a day. Four to get up with and four while the maid swirls the warming pan.”

“That’s only eight.”

“And grace at meals.”

“Oh, but you could,” he insisted. “You would see. It is such a joy to give each moment to God. And to choose continence.”

She held up a hand. “No more, please, Mr. Stevenson. I assure you I am not your match. I never could be.” They had come to the door back into the drawing room. She turned and smiled sweetly. “There’s an end, now. Had I deceived you into false hope, or put you off and let it dwindle and dwindle, I should have disliked myself so.”

They went into the drawing room then. John, who had just arrived at the other door with the general, saw at once in Young John’s face that the evening had not gone well for him either.

Caroline went up to her aunt, made some excuse about how fatiguing the harpsichord was, and retired from the company.

On her way upstairs she met Caspar coming down.

“Miss Sherringham,” he said. “You look as if you’d lost a friend and found her foot.”

The image was so unexpected it forced her to laugh, much against her true mood.

Caspar guessed at once that Boy had, in their mother’s phrase, “surprised” Linny Sherringham. She wasn’t pretty, he thought, but somehow he didn’t mind. She was pleasant to be near. You felt she was a very straight, honest sort of a girl. No tricks. Nothing devious.

“May I come by?” she said, smiling as if she thought his blocking the stairhead were a game.

Until that moment it hadn’t been, but he decided to make it so. He smiled, too, and shook his head. “House rule thirty-seven,” he said. “Christmas Day, young girl unattached, young man unattached, stairhead, forfeit to pass.”

She giggled. She put her hands behind her back and swirled, turning left, turning right. “What forfeit, stern sir?”

Her breasts were made very obvious by her movement; he thought of her taking Nick’s hand like that and putting it there. “A leeetle, leeetle kiss,” he said.

“No mistletoe?”

“House rule thirty-eight. Not needed.”

Smiling would-be wickedly, she rose one step nearer him. She raised her lips. “I like your house rules.”

“Of course you do,” he whispered. “House rule thirty-nine requires you to like all the others.”

“They get better as they go on.”

Their lips met. She intended the kiss to be brief and humorous. But Caspar, suddenly realizing how long it had been since he had kissed a girl, put his arms about her and lifted her the one remaining step. His kiss was long and passionate.

At first she resisted. Then she stood passively and let him feel he was not stirring her. He broke.

“Don’t,” she said. She was not annoyed or frightened or disgusted. Her tone plainly meant
Don’t spoil it.

He let go of her, ostentatiously. “I believe it may thaw tomorrow,” he said.

She laughed—and did not move impossibly far away either. “I’m dying to hear rule forty.”

“There has to be a thaw before rule forty applies,” he said. He licked his lips slowly.

She came near him and touched his face. “Don’t be serious,” she said.

He still smiled. “I imagine you’ve had quite enough seriousness for one evening?”

She blew a draught of air up over her face, as people do when they wish to mime heat or embarrassment.

“Now house rule forty-one…” he began.

“Yes?”

“Says you are free to go.” He turned his palms to face her.

“In that case…” She came back to him and kissed him lightly and briefly on the lips. The effect on him was far more powerful than the crusher he had stolen. “What about rule forty?” she wheedled.

“You’re getting warmer,” he said.

“You’re very different from your brother.”

“Oh, there could be only one Boy!”

“I’m glad you’re not like that,” she said.

He nodded and smiled, unable for once to say anything.

She went along the passage to her room, which was also Winifred’s. He ran after her but stopped short.

“Er…about house rule thirty-seven.”

“Yes?”

“It applies, as I said, only to
un
attached females.”

A slow smile spread over her face. “I’m so glad we didn’t break it,” she said. And when she reached her door, she turned, and added, “I don’t like breaking the rules.”

“Good night, Miss Sherringham.”

“Good night, Mr. Stevenson.”

He almost danced back downstairs. When he had told Winnie that Nick had had no respect for Linny Sherringham, he had got the boot on the wrong foot: She had no respect for Nick.

***

Later, on his way to bed, Caspar passed his father. He could not resist saying, “I think I understood most of what the general said, pater. But what was that
’n-turls
word he kept using?”

John stared at him long and hard. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I’m afraid I just don’t know.”

When Caspar got back to his own room he found Abigail sitting on his bed.

“Have you been at my diaries again?” he asked at once. Abigail was utterly amoral and had always helped herself to anything she wanted, on the faintest whim. In mitigation it had to be said that she was equally careless of her own belongings and didn’t at all mind if everyone borrowed everything of hers. Indeed, her brothers and sisters had proved as much by concertedly stripping her room of every personal possession one evening. She hadn’t even noticed.

“No use,” Abbie said. “It’s all in code. Besides, now I’m sixteen I’ve given up all that sort of childishness.”

“What are you doing here, then?”

“Bearding the lion in his den and other fearfully brave things, I suppose.”

Caspar relaxed enough to smile. Abbie had lately taken to saying “clever” and “funny” things, some of which (on the principle that if you only throw enough darts, a few are bound to score high) actually were quite funny or clever.

“I know something about our father that you don’t know,” she said.

“I very much doubt that,” Caspar answered, hoping to taunt her into an early revelation instead of suffering her usual cat-and-mouse dribble of fact and provocation.

“I followed him one day when he thought I was gone to Madame Tussaud’s.”

“Which way?” Caspar asked. The other Hamilton Place was not too far north of Madame Tussaud’s.

She knew at once from his tenseness that she had struck gold. “Ah!” she said.

He cursed his impatience and resolved to box a bit more clever. “I see!” he sneered. “This is the usual pottage of trivia all tricked out à la Abbie to resemble a substantial meal—which it ain’t!”

“Ah, but it is.”

“Go to bed, Abbie. I’m tired.”

“I followed him out to St. John’s Wood.”

Caspar let the light of far-off reminiscence flood his eyes. “You know,” he said, “when I was your age I followed him to Dalmatia. The firm was doubling a single-track railway, as I remember, which we had first…”

“I followed him to Hamilton Place.”

“The mater’s house? What’s so extraordinary about…”

“No! Another Hamilton Place.”

“There isn’t another Hamilton Place!” Caspar felt sick at these revelations; the last person to be entrusted with this kind of knowledge was Abigail. In one of her blind yet oh-so-calculating furies she would blurt it out in the most damaging possible way.

“There is, there is, there is,” she crowed, bouncing all the while on his bed.

He sprang upon her and pinned her down with his hands around her throat. For a moment he experienced a genuine intention to strangle her; but it quickly passed.

Abbie, however, had sensed it, and the knowledge of where she had driven Caspar both delighted and awed her. It was real power.

“Listen,” he told her, speaking vehemently. “You’ve stumbled on a grown-up secret and you’ve got to treat it like a grown-up.”

“Don’t pretend you know!” she said although she could tell that he did.

“I’ve known for three or four years and not even told Winnie or Boy. You’re the only other one who knows.” He let go of her and sat on the bedside.

“Who is she?” Abigail abandoned her now futile attempt to establish a superiority.

“Did you see her?”

“Yes—not to talk to. Just walking.”

“I’ve never actually seen her. What’s she like?” Now he could afford to let her have a superior moment.

“Pretty, I suppose. Who is she?”

“Her name’s Charity. She’s the girl who used to work at Aunt Arabella’s and Aunt Sarah’s.”

“They’ve got children, you know—Papa and her.”

“I know.” He also knew that he must now try to get her to take an adult view of this business. “It is the main reason for this schism between him and the mater. She is very hurt by it—especially, I imagine, because he lets her call herself Charity Stevenson and so their bastard children are also called Stevenson.”

“Have you talked to the mater about it?” Abigail desperately hoped he had; it was precisely the sort of secret she would love to share with her mother.

“Never!” Caspar said with all the urgency he could muster. “Even when I’ve seen her in tears and known it was that. Even though she knows I know. I’ve never…”

“How does she know you know?”

“Because the person who told me also told her.”

“Who?” Abbie was turning belligerent again.

“A scullery maid we used to have. You wouldn’t remember her. The point is, despite all this, I’ve never discussed it with her or tried to sympathize. It’s her private…”

“I can’t see why she worries.” Abbie pouted. “They’re not
real
Stevensons—only Stevensons by charity.” Her wide eyes waited for him to laugh—as, of course, he had to. It was the sort of remark that he, after a term at Cambridge, longed to have the wit to invent. Then she laughed, too, in an entirely innocent delight, as if some barely conscious part of her brain had said it—as much to her surprise as his.