The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (9 page)

‘Maggie.’ Patrick was looking at Julian. ‘Stuck here with no one her own age and just Mrs Hill, queen of gossip, talking about the dead and the war and the old days, and no doubt whispering to Susan about Maggie’s mother and the gypsy.’

‘Maggie’s living with her only known relative,’ Julian said gruffly. ‘Walter’s all she’s got and she’s never known anything else but Easton. Not everyone is desperate to travel the world to escape.’

The door opened again. This time Susan came in, carefully pushing the door fully back with her foot and carrying a tureen of potatoes. Behind her Mrs Hill, still in her apron, carried a joint of gammon, and in the rear Maggie bore in the cabbage as if she were an acolyte at some ritual.

‘Thank you, Mrs Hill, Susan.’ Lydia smiled. ‘And Maggie, of course.’

They trooped out, Mrs Hill’s feet thudding heavily.

Julian was filling the glasses once more, this time with an exceptionally dark wine. Patrick drank heavily.

Lydia leaned forward. ‘I hope you’re enjoying Easton, Laurence,’ she said. ‘It can be very beautiful in summer. When I first came I thought it was the most lovely spot in all England.’ She looked at him as if willing him to see it as it had been.

‘I love the downs—I always did when I was a boy.’ But he knew she meant Easton, not the county of Wiltshire. ‘And the church has great charm. I’m not sure what’s emerging where the tarry surface near the altar’s been removed, but it looks old and interesting and anyway much better than the existing surface, which would need replacing in any case.’

‘Of course,’ Lydia said. ‘Perhaps we could get one of the Kilminster boys to lend a hand. The older boy’s very willing and we could give him some small payment. And Walter if he’s up to it.’

Julian said, ‘I agree. If we don’t like what you find, we’ll just cover it up again.’

‘I was wondering if we could go and explore a bit?’ Eleanor said. ‘I’m the one who knows the area least and I’d love to see it properly, given I find myself among experts.’

‘Splendid idea.’ Patrick’s face lit up. ‘The next really fine day we’ll walk to Avebury, see a few things on the way.’ He leaned forward. ‘I know everybody’s beavering about at Easton but I had an idea. If you can face going a little further afield,’ he looked at Julian, pointedly, ‘what about the exhibition—at Wembley? We should go, don’t you think?’

Eleanor, amused, seemed about to reply when Julian spoke.

‘I’d been thinking about visiting it. There’s a whole section on advances in agriculture—not just displays, but free advice. And its patriotic, don’t you think?’

Patrick glanced at Eleanor, but she shook her head and picked up her glass.

‘You’ll come?’ he said, turning to William.

‘I don’t think it’s feasible,’ William said but before his demurral could cast a damper on Julian’s enthusiasm, he added, ‘But I’d like Nicky to see it.’

The door opened and Maggie started collecting dishes.

Patrick looked pleased. ‘Then you’ll come? Laurence? Frances? Lydia, would you come if we went by car?’

There was something in his tone that carried the expectation that Lydia would refuse. She’d started shaking her head even before he’d finished, but smiled as she said, ‘No, but you can bring me toffee tins with pictures of threshing machines and cowboys and coolies.’ Looking at her sister, she added firmly, ‘And Frances should go.’

‘Yes, you should,’ said Eleanor. ‘See what our country stands for. Not to forget our loyal dominions.’

Patrick gazed at Eleanor enquiringly. ‘You don’t approve?’ he said. ‘Or you really don’t want to go?’

‘Oh I’d like to see the sideshows,’ Eleanor said sweetly, and Laurence’s heart sank. ‘But I’m afraid all that colonial claptrap is a bit too rich.’

Laurence watched William try to hide a smile.

When Maggie put a clean plate down in front of Patrick, he looked up at her.

‘Now
you’d
like to see the King and Queen and go down a coalmine at the big exhibition in London, wouldn’t you Maggie? And go on the enormous funfair?’

Maggie coloured. She managed to put the next plate down on top of a fork, which flipped on to the floor. She struggled under the table to pick it up while Lydia raised an eyebrow but with a half-smile. Maggie stood up, brushing her hair out of her eyes. She rubbed the fork on her apron and put it down by Patrick’s plate.

‘Susan says she’d go but she can’t because the baby might come. It was in her magazine. She was trying to get David to go with me but he said over his dead body and Mrs Hill said she’d never been to London and never wanted to. David said it was a hell-hole and he wasn’t never going back.’

Lydia looked startled, but Eleanor said, ‘So you’ve already got secret plans?’

Maggie blushed an even darker red, her eyes meeting Frances’s almost pleadingly. ‘I’d like to see the Queen’s Doll’s House and the beautiful ladies dressed up as people from the olden days.’

‘You’re not alone there,’ Patrick muttered theatrically. ‘Right, if Mrs Easton is willing, why don’t you come? I’m sure you deserve a day off’

Actually if we go it would be terrifically decent to have Maggie along to help look after Nicky,’ Eleanor said. ‘Would that be all right, Lydia? And then, given he’s going back to my sister’s anyway around then, we could stay overnight and drop him off’

Lydia nodded, then said, ‘Thank you Maggie,’ and gently inclined her head to the door.

When the girl had gone out she added, ‘I think it would be a wonderful plan. Susan can’t go, obviously, and I’m sure she or Ellen Kilminster would be happy to keep an eye on William and me. Perhaps David could drive some of you up? I expect he’ll want to return at the end of the day, given Susan’s condition, and he can bring Maggie back, but the rest of you could stay in London.’

‘Frances, you’re very welcome to stay with us. Oh, do say you will.’ Eleanor, turning to William, said, ‘If you don’t mind, darling? It would all be quite jolly.’

Patrick said, ‘Mind you, I’m surprised the government managed to bring the exhibition off at all.’

Eleanor glanced up sharply.

‘Mr MacDonald inherited the idea from the Liberals,’ Laurence said. ‘I don’t suppose they had much choice. And there’s a general feeling it would cheer us all up. The newspapers are full of it. Londoners talk of little else.’

Patrick looked sceptical. ‘Chaos with the workmen, though. It near as dammit—sorry, Lydia—didn’t get built at all, from what I hear.’

‘What
do
you hear?’ Eleanor put her knife down. ‘Out in Greece?’

Something in the way she held her jaw made Laurence nervous. He turned to Julian. ‘Could you pass the wine?’

‘Well, inevitably the minute Mr MacDonald and his Independent Labour Party get in, the workers down tools. They thought they’d found their champion. Nasty shock, though. They found that once in government, the new lot carried on much as the old lot.’

‘It was an impossible situation,’ Eleanor said. ‘I doubt Mr MacDonald would have started such a white elephant of a project with so many other more worthwhile calls on the budget, but once started they wanted to make a go of it. They’re not amateurs. And it gave people jobs. Lots of people who were out of work.’

‘Jobs that they promptly turned against the government by going on strike. And then your Mr MacDonald—I presume he is yours?’ Patrick raised a eyebrow, ’—promptly crushes them by calling in the soldiers just as quickly as his predecessors would have done. The purity of ideals meets the reality of power.’

‘No,’ Eleanor said, her cheeks burning. ‘That’s just not fair.’

‘Hard on the soldiers, I imagine,’ Laurence interrupted, hoping to divert her. ‘I doubt ordinary soldiers ever like intervening against men who might have fought beside them a few years earlier.’

‘Quite like Russia, though,’ Patrick said, picking up his glass, but Laurence noticed his other hand, resting on the table, was clenched tight.

‘That’s an idiotic comment and ill informed,’ Eleanor fired back.

‘Eleanor,’ William said and she shot him a furious glance before glancing around the table.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said tightly, ‘I’m being very rude.’ She looked at Patrick as if to indicate that the rudeness was entirely his responsibility, then said, ‘It’s only because it’s not a parlour game to me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Patrick said. ‘I’ve been too long out of polite society.’

Lydia said brightly, ‘Well, I think for you all to see the replica of King Tut’s tomb would be an awfully good adventure.’

‘I read that they’re having a mass of trouble with our cowboys,’ Frances added quickly. ‘From America. They’re cruel to horses apparently.’

Julian looked concerned. ‘Questions asked in parliament. Quite right too.’

‘I’m afraid our Wild West lacks refinement,’ Frances said, reaching for Lydia’s hand. While engaged with the conversation at the table, she continued to stroke her sister’s swollen joints. Laurence had often noticed this apparently unconscious gesture of care. ‘But at least we don’t
eat
horses like the French.’

‘Got offered them in France,’ Julian said. ‘Digby wasn’t having it. Stuck to potatoes.’

‘The men ate it,’ William said. ‘My lot, anyway. ‘Though I don’t think
cheval
meant much. Hunger’s hunger. Stew’s stew. I felt rather the same at the time.’

Laurence regarded Eleanor out of the corner of his eye. She had stopped eating and was gazing at her lap. Patrick was watching her too but it was hard to tell what he was thinking. William, usually adept at steering his wife away from controversy in public, had a fixed smile on his face as another silence fell.

Laurence searched wildly for a less contentious topic. ‘I’ve been thinking about going abroad myself in the autumn.’

This did get Eleanor’s attention and the others’ too.

‘At Westminster I took on the job of a chap who was badly injured, but he’s returning soon, and although the school has offered me a different post, I’ve been considering something else. I thought being down here would give me a chance to think it through. I’ve been offered a year of private tutoring. A foreign diplomat whose son was briefly at Westminster.’

He could hear himself almost parroting the phrases he’d used when he had been interviewed in the fine Belgravia house. Signor della Scala had sat among his books, his almost perfect English and his Sackville Street tailoring at odds with his dark colouring and black eyes. He was serious but businesslike, and his earnest wish to do well by his only son was evident. After the interview he had shown Laurence some ancient cameos, exquisite pieces of work, kept in a locked case. The man had done his research on Laurence’s past: at one point in the interview, Laurence had been disarmed to see a copy of his book on the desk. It looked as if it had been read.

Laurence had warmed to the man and his dignified eagerness, yet as he left the house he had felt unready to take such a giant step. On some days, the war and the life he had led before it seemed very far away; at other times dreams woke him, or the sudden intrusion of memories he hoped had gone for ever stopped him in his tracks. In France he had promised himself that, in the unlikely event of his returning safe home, he would never leave his country again. However, in the last few days at Easton he’d occasionally felt that the post offered exciting possibilities and that, having lost every element of his former life so utterly, just following its almost vanished trails was more dispiriting than making a new start.

Eleanor was looking at him as if ready to strike but he plunged on, already seeing where this diversion might lead and knowing that the details he was omitting would soon be forced out of him.

‘I like the family. The boy is clever but not very strong.’

‘Where is this?’ Frances said, with what he knew was deceptive lightness.

‘Rome,’ he answered while deliberately avoiding her gaze.

Lydia spoke. ‘My mother-in-law would have approved.’ She smiled with more animation than she usually showed.

‘The Roman Church,’ Julian said. ‘Poor Mother.’

‘Father made all sorts of promises when he married her that he would respect her beliefs,’ Patrick said. ‘But once he’d got her, he had no time for it, had he?’

Julian cut up the last mouthfuls on his plate with great care, as if it took all his attention, and made no reply. Patrick looked exasperated at his studied silence. Laurence often thought that in his way Patrick did want a relationship with his brother and half the goading was to get a response, any response, from him. It was Julian who wouldn’t engage.

‘Rome was Mama’s dream in every sense,’ Patrick said. ‘I’m surprised she didn’t want her heart buried there.’

Frances made a face.

‘Anyway, Laurence, you may go as her posthumous emissary,’ Patrick went on. Astonishing country. It has all the beauty of nature, from mountains to hills purple with vines, to the grottoes of Capri, the ruins of Pompeii, and then there is all the art that tyranny and patronage can produce. And the Italians are a beautiful race, at least when young. Of course even as adults they’re like children—excitable, sentimental, imbued with religious superstition—but things are beginning to be turned around. There’s a new sort of politics.’

‘Do you mean Signor Mussolini?’ Frances asked, glancing at Eleanor.

‘I’m sure the man’s the very devil,’ Patrick said, ‘but he’s got the measure of the country. They can either continue as struggling peasants and hot-headed revolutionaries, or they can take a bit of discipline and join the modern world.’

‘His party have overthrown the elected government,’ Eleanor said quietly. ‘His only real opponent has just been murdered.’

‘The Deputy? What’s his name? Matteotti?’ Patrick said. ‘He’s only disappeared. Who knows where he is? It might be a Socialist stunt. And Mussolini’s not been implicated. It’s a new system, and it’s early days. Power struggles are to be expected. It’s not far off the situation with Zinoviev and Trotsky in Russia, except far less dangerous for them and for us.’

‘A stunt?’ Eleanor said, her voice clipped.

‘It’s a different culture,’ Patrick replied. ‘They’ve been soaked in blood for their entire history: think of Tarquin, Emperor Augustus, the Borgias, indeed, most of the popes, Garibaldi. That’s what they understand. Italy is in chaos. Mussolini’s giving it a future.’