The Uninvited Guests (14 page)

‘Well, I haven’t another brother, so it was most certainly this one – Ernest,’ said Patience, a trifle huffily.

‘Oh, I see,’ said John, generously, with the air of someone who doesn’t want to make a row out of a thing, but knows he is right. He prided himself on his memory. He prided himself on a great many things. He was privately perfectly sure there had been another brother, with orange hair and an eye-patch, that these two attractive siblings had either forgotten or decided to conceal from him for some reason, but he couldn’t very well accuse the Suttons of lying, so he let it go.

Ernest took off his spectacles to rub his eyes for a moment and Emerald found herself practically leaning forward to discover his face without them. When his spectacles were returned to his face, she was released, and turned back to John. She couldn’t think of a polite way of putting,
Yes, Ernest is unrecognisable and changed. He was an undeniably off-putting child and now he is altogether different
, so she said instead, ‘I believe it was one Easter, up here at Sterne, that you all met.’

‘You’re right!’ cried Patience, but they were saved from rootling around their collective memories for nuggets of nostalgia concerning painted eggs and games of forfeits designed by her father by the door opening once more. Clovis and his new friend bounced into the room, all smiles, Clovis pointing at the white tie and rigid shirtfront that Charlie was adjusting with sallow fingertips.

‘Howzat?’ asked Charlie sunnily. ‘Howzat?’

Emerald thought perhaps she had misjudged him earlier. He seemed determined to win everyone over.

‘You look very smart, Mr …’ She shook her head, forgetting the name again. ‘Very smart indeed; and who would have guessed Clovis would have more than one white tie in his wardrobe? Clo, would you put a log on the fire? It’s hard to believe it’s—’

A huge clap of thunder – loud enough to penetrate the walls – stopped her mid-sentence, and drew gasps of horror and delight from the guests.

‘That’s all we need on a night like this!’ cried Charlie with relish, and they all crowded to the tall windows, as if expecting to watch a fireworks display. They craned through the glass, eager for more noise, more flashes of the wild electric. Rain lashed the panes. The door opened behind them.

They all turned.

Charlotte, a living painting in the rectangle of the doorway, waited for their welcome.

‘Mother—’

‘Good evening—’

Charlotte’s expression, adoring – either those she gazed upon or herself – altered of a sudden to something like horror. She could not disguise it. Her fingers, which had been resting lightly on the doorknob, a crystal one, gripped it whitely, and she fixed her eyes on the gentleman traveller.

‘
You?
’ she said.

‘Yes.’ Their visitor’s tone was easy, but his catlike stillness was menacing. ‘And yet I feel I ought to
reintroduce
myself –
my
name hasn’t changed but yours has, I believe. Mrs Swift now.’

‘Yes, Charlotte Swift now,’ she murmured, never taking her extraordinary eyes from his face.

Emerald went over to her mother, moved by an urge to protect her, although from what she didn’t know.

‘Mother, this gentleman was on the train, the one that crashed. Clovis invited him for supper.’

Clovis put in, ‘Ma, Mr… Charlie said you knew one another.’

All at once Charlotte broke into one of her very vaguest and loveliest laughs.

‘We do know one another, Clovis. Charlie Traversham-Beechers is an old acquaintance, although it has been very many years.’ She seemed to have no trouble recalling his name.

‘Eleven years,’ he said.

‘Only eleven? I
am
so surprised to see you! And how delightful you ended up here – you must have been guided by the fates.’ She laughed again. ‘Bad fates for the train; good for stumbling into Sterne! And I’m delighted you are going to dine with us. That is, if it’s agreeable to my daughter. It’s her birthday, you know.’

She produced a smile for Emerald who, all of a sudden, adored her.

‘You look very beautiful, Mother,’ she said quietly.

‘Nowhere near as beautiful as you, my darling. Your dress is a triumph,’ said Charlotte, although she was not now looking at her but at the four men in the room. ‘And hello, Patience: and welcome, Edm-Ernest. Welcome all!’ She wandered among them, greeting each guilelessly. ‘We’ve had such a time of it – no more than you, of course, Mr Traversham-Beechers. I suppose poor Mrs Trieves has
attempted
to announce supper already? More than once?’

With that, the door opened and Florence Trieves, tidy but for a shred of leek in her hair, and a wild expression, confronted them.

‘Dinner is served, Mrs Swift,’ she said, and began to withdraw. She was stopped – that is, she was violently arrested in the process of leaving by the sight of their smartly turned-out visitor, who was himself straining to present himself to her, as if striking a pose to an off-stage drum-roll. Florence froze, staring at him.

‘Th—’ she began. Then, ‘Wha—’ And she dragged her eyes from his face to her employer’s. The trembling leek dropped from her hair.

Charlotte pinned her with a look. ‘We have another guest, Mrs Trieves,’ she announced coolly, as all looked on. ‘I don’t believe you know him.’

There was a brief silence, as loaded as a suet dumpling.

‘No, of course. Thank you, ma’am,’ said Florence and abruptly left them.

Charlotte turned, beaming, to the room, faltering only minutely as the interloper, Traversham-Beechers, stepped forward and offered her his arm. The others turned to one another, considering the etiquette of who should take whom into dinner, and under cover of their confusion, he said to Charlotte, ‘I’m so pleased you’re accommodating us – accommodating me.’

She gave him a piercing, fearful look. ‘Do I have a choice?’ she murmured, for his ears alone.

‘Come,’ was all he said in response. He patted his forearm.

She slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow, rested her pale fingers lightly on his black sleeve.

‘Lead the way, Emerald! Mr Buchanan!’ she cried, with studied gaiety.

John gave a small bow to Emerald and took her hand, tucking it firmly into his arm. Emerald was relieved he was taking notice of her at last; she had begun to feel invisible. She was relieved, too, that she should not have to touch Ernest’s sleeve, as even thinking of it made the exposed skin of her arms, breast and neck suddenly, noticeably, feel all the more bare. It was not an unpleasant nakedness, quite the opposite, but for all that, extremely unnerving; the man undressed her without a glance. John’s stolid presence was protection, and she grasped his forearm for anchorage, as much as anything.

With two pairs made, Clovis, Patience and Ernest were left in an embarrassed triangle. Clovis stared across at Patience with a look that would have downright frightened many girls but then, having no choice within the rules of decent behaviour, approached her and thrust out his arm. She took it.

‘Clovis,’ she said.

‘Patience,’ he responded stiffly.

They did not look into one another’s faces, but each was keenly aware of the other’s proximity. Clovis could not help but notice that she smelled sweetly of flowers of some sort; she could not help but feel the heat surrounding him, at odds with his ostensible coldness.

Ernest, alone, was without a companion to take to dinner.

‘We are in formation. Mr Sutton, would you bring up the rear, and guard us from attack?’ asked Charlotte obscurely, and with that the party left the room.

A patter of feet behind them in the passage heralded Smudge’s arrival. She tiptoed, hoping vainly to blend in as the adults turned to her as one.

‘No hair ribbon?’ asked her mother, and Smudge’s hand flew to the side of her head where a large, drooping bow was occasionally tied. ‘I smell horse. Have you been at the stables?’

Smudge rubbed her blackened hands on her blue velvet skirt under the gaze of her mother, sister, brother and the guests, all sniffing delicately to detect the odour of the stables.

‘Yes,’ she admitted.

‘Go and wash your hands at once,’ said Emerald.

‘Oh no!’ Smudge was appalled. ‘Will you wait? Who’s going to take me in?’ she said, hopping.

‘I will, Miss Imogen,’ said Ernest firmly, prepared to wait as long as it might take for Smudge to make herself presentable.

‘Good, thank you, Mr Sutton,’ murmured Charlotte. ‘Then, shall we?’ And she prepared to leave him.

Just then, the telephone rang.

All stood listening to its harsh tone, echoing from the distant hall, an arresting, modern sound in any case, but jarringly portentous this evening.

They waited.

The telephone continued to ring. At length, Myrtle hurried past them, fiercely out of breath, and pulling her cap straight. Her wake smelled wonderfully of cooking onions and meat.

They reached the door to the dining room just as Myrtle came jogging back, attempting – and failing – to run as if she had no other duty than to answer the telephone.

‘Mrs Torrington, ma’am, Miss Torrington; it’s the Railway. About the passengers.’

‘Oh – I had forgotten all about that,’ said Charlotte. ‘
Must
I talk to them now?’

‘Oh Mother,
please!
’ said Emerald urgently. ‘Perhaps they’re coming for them at last—’

‘Clovis?’

‘Dash it—’

‘Would you like
me
to take the call?’ said Charlie Traversham-Beechers in an oddly commanding voice. ‘I have dealt with the Railway before.’

‘No!’ said Charlotte sharply. ‘
Not you.
Emerald.’

Emerald, obeying her mother, started towards the telephone in the hall, but as she reached it, they were all distracted by a loud
click –
not from the telephone, but from the study.

All stared as the knob turned and the door opened, wider and wider… Shuffling together, the passengers began to emerge. The room tipped them out like beetles poured from a shoebox. There seemed so many of them, surely there had only been a dozen or so? Now they were at least twenty-five. The family and guests paused and stared as they came, looking, if anything, shabbier, dingier even, than they had on arrival. A few of them wandered aimlessly to the windows, to look at the rain streaming down the rivulets in their thousands splintering the stormy view.

Emerald, distracted, remembered the telephone with a start, and hurried to it. The dingy faces turned to watch her.

‘The
Railway
,’ they whispered to one another. ‘The Railway.’

Guests, family and passengers stood about the hall as Emerald approached the table on which the telephone stood.

She picked it up.

Along the pulsing lines in the windy night, up the long, plaited black cord, a hissing, crackling sound came to her, like waves washing over pebbles, moving them to clacking collisions.

Far distant, a feeble voice whispered to her tiredly, ‘
Hello?
’

‘Hello? Is that the Railway?’ said Emerald doubtfully.

‘Yes,’ came the tiny voice, and yet she somehow very much doubted that it was. It sounded for all the world like a child’s voice, a feeble child. ‘Yes, this is the Great Central Railway,’ it said, and a little group whispering by the glass turned their heads to look at her.

The waves washed up over the distant pebbles, back and forth, back and forth, and, at length, a bell vibrated.
Ringing… Ringing…
And then a loud male voice barked, ‘Yes, hello?’

Emerald, despite herself, jumped and held the receiver a little away from her ear.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘Madam, are you calling about the accident on the branch line earlier today?’

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

The voice was extraordinarily loud now, and audible to all of them even over the noise of the storm.

‘We have some more passengers for you!’

‘More?’ Emerald was aghast – as was everybody there, all quite aghast and agog.

‘Several more; and they will need to be collected. You missed the group we sent earlier. Why was that?’ His tone was strident in the extreme. ‘Why, may I ask? They had to make their own way!’

Emerald was shocked at his aggression. What had they at Sterne done to deserve it?

‘We – well, we—’

‘You are not to miss these. We have sent them up to you. There’s no other possible house in the area. They are to be met, do you understand? Met and accommodated!’

‘Yes. We’ll meet them,’ she heard herself say steadily, ignoring the imploring face of her mother.

‘Very well. Now, there’s no way of reaching you tonight,’ said the voice: bossy, tinny, like a loud-hailer at a political meeting instructing people to disband, it rang thinly round Sterne’s hall. ‘There’s nothing at all to be done about these people tonight, do you hear me?’

‘Nothing?’ said Emerald. The ivory, green and pink contours of her party dress, her rich brown hair, her glistening beaded comb, creamy neck and lifting imperious chin were the focal point for all the disparate people watching her. ‘Nothing you can do at all?’ she repeated.

‘Nothing!’ said the voice, even louder than before. ‘You’ll just have to manage them all until the morning. It is your duty! Do you know how remote you are? Do you know how far help will have to come? You must make do. Needs must. Can you hear me?’

Emerald bowed her head. ‘Yes, I heard you.’

Then the voice spoke rapidly, as if, having been dealt with she had been forgotten already, moving on to some other more pressing problem.

‘The Great Central Railway apologises for your inconvenience. Goodbye.’ And with a tapping sound, it disappeared.

There was silence.

Then, Elsie Goodwin’s voice screeched, ‘Oh dear!’

And a click. And silence again.

The guests and family regarded the grouped faces of the travellers, and the travellers stared back, dimly. Charlie Traversham-Beechers was slightly apart; having given up Charlotte’s arm for the moment. He was pressed back against the wall, his palms flat to it, his expression glittering with determination or triumph. He was unobserved by all but Smudge, who recoiled from the sight of him.