Authors: Fay Weldon
The New Countess (21 page)
But in another respect Arthur’s life seemed oddly empty. He missed Minnie. Sleeping in the Gatehouse was all very well. He was away from his mother’s obsessive renovations, and he could concentrate on his work and not have to waste time in eating, female chatter, talk of children and fashion; but sleeping alone was chilly now that Autumn had arrived. Strachan had arranged for locks to be put on all possible windows at the Gatehouse, and the hired workmen had managed to break a few panes of glass in so doing and had not replaced them. He was reluctant to alert Isobel – it would probably end up with her deciding the Gatehouse had to be rebuilt altogether – it was the kind of thing Minnie could have organized without fuss or bother. And a man, he realized, needed domestic companionship; someone to sleep next to, to talk to about nothing in particular, to listen to him and admire, to join gentle forces with him against his mother’s forays. Minnie was always tact itself. She had served so many purposes. Perhaps his anger with her had been misplaced. He had expected her to come running back with her tail between her legs, but she had not.
He went up to the Court twice a week to say good-night to the children at bath time. It occurred to him that perhaps they were missing their mother, although they were well enough looked after by Nanny under his own mother’s supervision, and Isobel had assured him they were perfectly happy. But in the past couple of weeks Edgar and Connor had seemed a little subdued; Connor had even asked him where his mummy was, and Edgar’s little mouth had turned down in an unmanly way. Connor had blisters on his ankles. Arthur had queried whether the child’s shoes were too tight and Nanny had said tight shoes were good for growing feet. They hardened the skin. He asked Isobel if this was the case.
‘Don’t interfere, Arthur, Nanny knows what she is doing. You’re as bad as Minnie, worrying about this, that and the other,’ she had replied.
Whatever was going on with Strachan was good for her complexion but not good for her mood. She seemed perpetually irritated. Minnie would just have got in the Jehu, gone down to Brighton, bought new shoes and thrown away the old ones. And surely Nanny was too old for the job? His mother saw only what she wanted to see. Minnie saw what was really going on. He missed her body and her hair and the shape of her, the curl of her foot against his when he woke. And then he’d leap out of bed, when he should have stayed with her, unable to resist the call of the Jehu. Sins of omission were as bad as sins of commission. He had resisted Miss Braintree but it was not enough.
‘I am not going to last for ever,’ said his father the Earl. They were in the long, top room of the Gatehouse. Arthur poured him a liberal glass of twenty-year-old Highland single malt. These days Arthur did not drink himself, claiming it clouded his brain, but his father took it as given that all discussions were lubricated by requisite amounts of good whisky or wine. ‘These things must be talked about. I do not know what goes on between you and Minnie and I would prefer not to, but one day you will be an Earl, responsible for a large estate and all the people and properties that go with that inheritance. You in your turn will pass it on to Edgar and his children.’
‘I am all too aware of this, Pater,’ said Arthur. ‘But need we talk about it now?’
‘Yes, we must,’ said his Lordship. ‘You have brought it on yourself. You have let Minnie go, and the estate needs her.’
‘Why?’ asked Arthur. ‘After you are gone Mama can take over.’
‘Your mother is good at fashion and high society: she does not understand the needs of people or land.’
‘But Pater, neither do I,’ said Arthur. ‘I understand the needs of the automobile, petrol and oil, water and air, but not, or so I am told by Minnie, of human beings. I find their emotions very trying, but why shouldn’t I? I can produce heirs a-plenty, it seems, but when it comes to wheat and forestry, it is quite true, I am at a loss.’
‘Drollery aside, Arthur,’ he said, ‘when I am gone, Minnie, not your mother, must take over the estate. We chose wisely there. She has a good practical head on her shoulders and is not easily bullied. Your mother must retire gracefully as Dowager Countess to the Dower House – which she can renovate to her heart’s content. You must go after Minnie and get her back, before she wanders off.’
‘She won’t wander off,’ said Arthur. ‘She loves me. She is safely with Rosina.’
‘It is in the nature of women to wander off,’ said the Earl. ‘Even more than it is of men. They go in search of love; men go in search of sex.’
‘But I didn’t,’ protested Arthur.
‘The facts of the matter are neither here nor there,’ said the Earl.
It seemed to Arthur very wrong that his own father should be talking to him about such things. It was embarrassing. Was his father referring to his mother and Inspector Strachan – or did he perhaps himself have some secret of his own? There had been a time when the Earl had been infatuated with Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, or so it had been rumoured.
‘Even if any liaison had occurred,’ said Arthur, ‘Minnie should be man enough to accept it. The Queen does not worry about the King’s infidelities. He had a whole loose box of mistresses at his own Coronation. And you and Mama are receiving Mrs Keppel in December for the shoot.’
‘Very much against Isobel’s wishes,’ said Robert. ‘The mood of the people has changed, and your mother is as ever sensitive to such things. Even Bertie no longer takes Mrs Keppel about in public. What matters is discretion. Women take romantic affairs to heart as men do not. The kindest thing is to keep them in ignorance of what goes on. There are a few highly passionate women about, true, but they, like intelligent women, are a minority and society both disapproves of, and pities them. Your sister Rosina, for one, is too intelligent for her own contentment and happiness.’
‘You are not suggesting Rosina is highly passionate?’ Arthur asked, shocked.
‘Oh no,’ said Robert, and then shocked his son even more, ‘though I suspect she may be as interested in women as in men. You have no idea, it seems, of what company your wife may be keeping. She is your wife, for better or worse, mother of the future Earl of Dilberne, and Minnie is a great deal better than most. Go and get her back.’
So Arthur left Firbank and Hawkley in charge, and went to London in search of his wife to bring her back. He did so with joy, relief and anticipation in his heart.
Minnie’s mother Tessa sailed into Liverpool on the SS
Carpania
, the new Cunard liner
.
It was as luxurious and comfortable as the advertisements claimed, and with its two steam turbines and three propellers made a quick crossing if a rough one. It was, after all, Winter: the wind was wild and the waves tumultuous. Tessa too had come in search of Minnie, but with anxiety in her heart. This is the fate of parents everywhere. The birth of a child is a lifetime’s sentence to anxiety.
Fathers are perhaps less sensitive to it than mothers. Tessa’s husband Billy O’Brien had pointed out that no one took the trip in Winter if they could help it, but since his wife seemed helpless in the face of her own nature, he would have to put up with being without her for a couple of weeks. When the piglet squeals all must rush. It was the nature of the beast. He would come with her but unhappy marriages were female matters. He gave Tessa an open cheque book: if need be she must bring Minnie and the children back, but only if need be. He was an old man: he had bruised his knuckles once rescuing Minnie from the scoundrel of her choice: he did not want to have to do it again.
Grace was seasick nearly all the way over. They were on the passenger list as Mrs Tessa O’Brien and maid, for although Grace was now doing well in business and was quite the leading light in Cook County’s juvenile charities, with her quiet voice, commanding air and perfect manners, she was still a British citizen and Tessa wanted no trouble with passports. There was no time to be wasted. Minnie’s last letter had left Tessa perplexed. Her letters home – as letters home so often do – usually offered only good news: how kind the family were, how the children were thriving, how Arthur’s business had taken off. But the last one had been strange, speaking of how she was missing the children, talking of Rosina (who so far as anyone knew had disappeared into Australia), and asking for money. Perhaps some earlier letter of hers had gone astray? And why could she possibly have no money – Billy had settled enough on her, God alone knew – and what could she need it for?
So Tessa worried and agitated on the first day at sea. Grace did what she could to soothe her. Her own opinion was that probably Minnie had fallen in love with some mad artist and run off: like mother, like daughter. The Irish enjoyed their sensuous pleasures and were romantics. On the other hand Minnie did not seem the hard kind of Irishwoman who would countenance leaving her own children in the name of love. So perhaps it was that her husband Arthur had been unfaithful – that too was most definitely in the blood – and Minnie, coming from God’s Own Country and expecting more of life than an Englishwoman might, had taken offence.
On the first day of the voyage Grace did not say so: she did not want to upset Tessa further. After five years away from England she had forgotten what it was to be a skivvy, and had graduated to valued companion, even friend. Tessa still sought her advice on the art of cultivated and cultural living. Grace had developed her own little business selling art works and pottery, but she still lived in the O’Briens’ household as one of the family and knew that alarming Tessa could be a noisy to-do. On the second day the
Carpania
hit bad weather and Grace was too ill to say very much at all.
‘I wish I were dead,’ was all Grace kept on saying, while Tessa, concerned, mopped her brow and held basins for her one-time lady’s maid. The steward, since they were travelling first class, was attentive. He came quickly with fresh towels and bowls, and glasses of lemon and orange juice mixed, which Grace did her best to keep down. ‘I wish I had never come.’
‘May God forgive you, no you don’t,’ said Tessa. ‘It’s only the seasickness. Set foot on solid land and it passes over. And you’ll be wanting to show yourself off to your old friends, won’t you, and prove what a success you’ve made of yourself – the Barnardo’s girl made good.’
Grace was unimpressed. She looked at Tessa with glazed eyes and vomited again.
The steward, a lanky Irish lad who when asked what his name was said, ‘Finn – son of Erin’, took Grace’s forearm and pressed an inch or so above the wrist, saying it was a cure for seasickness he had learned from his father, a trawler man in Dublin Bay.
Grace recovered sufficiently to say to Tessa, ‘What do you think I am? A cock to crow on a dung heap? All I want is to help your poor daughter out of a fix, same as you. It’s all my fault anyway, that’s all. I should have spoken up when I could, but I didn’t.’
‘What do you mean by that? Spoken up about what?’ asked Tessa.
‘About your Minnie marrying Master Arthur in the first place. I know what he’s like and he’s no gentleman for all he’s a Viscount. He had his way with me and by the end of the school holidays couldn’t so much as remember who I was.’
Tessa took time to take this on board and then said serenely: ‘Well, he was a young man, wasn’t he. What do they care for, but a notch on the bedpost? Many a man in my own lifetime has quite forgotten my face. Don’t distress yourself, Grace. I was too busy selling the lace on my poor Minnie’s petticoat to take any notice, and as for Minnie, she always did have an eye for a rotter. Let’s face it, it’s as likely to be her fault as his.’
Finn the steward, who had been doing his best to work out the relationship between the older lady and the younger, overheard this last and came to the conclusion they had switched cabins. Tessa, who was Irish, was the maid and Grace, who was English, was the mistress. He had no love of the English. He let the pressure on Grace’s forearm go and she felt ill again at once and brought up the orange and lemon juice. Finn relented and went to fetch some Allen & Hanburys’ morphine pastilles, and gave them to madam to suck and after that at least she slept a great deal more and vomited less.
Finn, considering himself in servitude to the English as he did, saw Mrs O’Brien as a true daughter of Ireland, and had a friendly exchange or so with her: he was jumping ship to join the Sons of Finn McCool when the ship docked at Queenstown. Tessa passed the time on the voyage purloining food from the groaning tables of the first-class lounge and giving it to Finn. He in his turn would smuggle the booty down to the third-class passengers. They were quartered in dormitories and dined on bread and cheese, stringy stew and watery potatoes. Tessa went down in person once, and found to her surprise that conditions below were not as bad as she had imagined, or certainly as Finn claimed, leaving the seasickness out of it. But then steerage was half empty – immigrant boats left for the United States full, returning only with those few who were disappointed with what they found, or single women who had been barred entry at Ellis Island, unable or unwilling to find someone to marry them on the way over. Their quarters were clean if Spartan; nurses tended to the sick, the food was plentiful if plain. Tessa’s gifts were welcome enough: the oysters, filets mignons, whole roast duck, chocolate cream gâteaux, little bottles of whisky and brandy; anything Tessa managed to secrete without being seen, with the aid of napkins and pockets. Tessa’s pleasures might now belong in first class but her heart belonged in third, as is so often the way with those who start poor and end rich.
On the third day the waves abated and Grace felt better. Finn had a word with the Purser to the effect that the ladies’ cabins had been wrongly assigned, and Grace accepted an invitation to dine at the Captain’s table, where she conducted herself with the manners and grace of a fine lady. Tessa dining without her companion was received with that excess of cool politeness which the English reserve for the Irish, a mixture of pity and a profound conviction of their own superiority. No wonder Finn resented them.
