The Uninvited Guests (17 page)

Even Emerald and Patience had gasped at the disappearance of the cigarette case. John, Clovis and even Ernest laughed with disbelief and sudden innocence, and exchanged childlike, friendly looks.

Charlotte had girded herself once more.

‘Steady yourselves, children,’ she said coldly; ‘it’s in his sleeve.’

‘Oh, is it?’ said the gentleman with a smile, adding mysteriously, ‘You won’t stop me like that. And I felt sure I saw it …’ He stood up and reached behind the elaborate cushion of Charlotte’s hair. She shivered quickly, all down her body.

‘Here!’ And with a flash he produced the case again, glinting in the candlelight.

Patience clapped her hands together.

‘Oh, do it again! I love tricks!’ she said. She had altogether forgotten her discomfort of only moments before, she was so utterly delighted with him now.

Traversham-Beechers looked at Charlotte again. ‘Anything for my hostess,’ he said, ‘who has so very kindly let us
all
in.’

As he said it, they heard a rising whisper, a gentle cry from the abandoned passengers in the study, as if they were a nighttime forest with the wind passing through it. Everyone at the table paused to listen, recalling with distaste that they had eaten their fish course, while the unfortunate passengers were entirely unattended to. Smudge alone didn’t notice the sound, the child had the kitten pressed to her ear and, in her innocence, could hear only its purrs.

The following brief silence was interrupted violently by Myrtle’s hurried entrance carrying a basket of bread, which she placed on the table. Seeing it, Smudge was reminded of her responsibility towards the pony Lady; however much fun she was having at the birthday party, she ought not forget her Undertaking. She groaned and leapt to her feet.

‘Please excuse me!’ She deposited the kitten Tenterhooks onto her chair and sped from the room.

She always ran when going alone through the house and she did so now; along the corridor, through the baize door, into the kitchen, negotiating the chaos there – sorting desperately through it, and finding, in a crate on the floor, a wormy apple, and near it a lumpy crust. Smudge grabbed them, tore open the door to the back stairs and flew up, panting.

Lady had made a good job of chewing the eiderdown and stepped a great many charcoal sticks into the floor, but there was no serious damage done. She dozed now, resting one back leg delicately on the edge of the hoof, her lower lip sagging. Smudge sat at her feet and fed her, regaining her breath with her head leaning against the wall.

The air of the kitchen was thickened to tangibility with steam and coating odours. No more teasing little fishes, no more feeble beurre blanc; it was time for meat.

Florence wiped the sweat from her face, dried her hands on her apron. She should have liked a fresh dress; this one was stiff. She could smell nothing, had been in the thick of it for too long; the roots of her hair, her cuticles, the soles of her feet inside her boots were covered with layers of preparation; the juices and oils of meats and starches were part of her, undetected. Her very tongue was dulled; she wouldn’t have been able to taste a pickled onion had one been popped into her mouth.

Joints, knuckles, rolls, twine, sprouts, rabbit, edgings, curls, piles, fronds… She bent ever closer. Her fingers worked on figures of eight, spirals, dustings, minute shells and strong-salted pieces, tiny, tinier, tiniest.

Having satisfied herself the pony was no immediate danger to herself or the house, Smudge began the return journey to the dining room. Trotting along the empty upper landing, she did not expect to see, rounding the corner of the stair, a man coming up towards her. She froze in her tracks, hands flung out to stop herself.

He was an enormous man, made thicker and more huge by the carrying of a great sack on his back. He had a cap pulled down over his face, such as a municipal employee might wear, and deep, burning eyes above a thick beard. Behind him were two small children, stick-legged and fearful, clinging to the banisters.

‘Excuse me, miss,’ he said.

But Smudge did not pause to hear any more from him. She sprinted down the corridor, away from him, and threw herself down the scullery stairs.

‘MRS TRIEVES!’

Florence leapt nearly out of her boots. ‘Smudge! Miss Imogen! Good Lord! My God!’ Her scalp prickled with shock, or sweat, or both.

‘I think you need to come and help.’ Smudge wobbled with pale fear at the bottom of the scullery stairs, but Florence had other matters to see to.

‘Not now! Not now, child.’

‘I – I went to see something, and there was a
man.
’

‘Oh Lord,
not now!
’

‘Myrtle, then?’ Smudge was desperate.

‘Clearing.’

‘Somebody. Emerald…
Mother?
’ (This last signalled her desperation.) ‘Mrs Trieves, they’re upstairs!’

‘Upstairs? Heavens, that won’t do. Come along.’

Through the baize door they went, together, and came immediately upon a small huddle of passengers stealing along the corridor and talking quietly amongst themselves.

‘Get back!’ Florence commanded violently to the startled group, and, clutching Smudge’s hand, ran to the dining room.

‘They’re out of the study and all over the house!’ she cried.

What!, Heavens!
and other exclamations of dismay came from the group.

‘You ladies stay in here,’ commanded John, standing abruptly.

He was joined by Clovis and Ernest and they advanced towards the hall.

‘Trivering …’ Clovis had forgotten his dashed name again. ‘Aren’t you coming with us?’

‘Must I?’ responded the man lazily, and drew himself to his feet.

‘Come along!’ cried John urgently, and at last, he joined them.

The gentlemen gone, the door closed, the women were left to themselves. Florence hovering by the sideboard, hesitant.

‘Oh heavens,’ said Charlotte, fanning herself. ‘How vile.’

‘I can’t imagine what we can have been thinking, neglecting them so shabbily,’ said Emerald.

‘Footle!’ returned her stubbornly unrepentant mother. ‘They should all be taken out and thrashed! If only Robert were here,’ she cried, dashing her brow with her fist.

Smudge went and knelt by her, touching her dress.

‘Oh don’t!’ she said, flinching, so Emerald took the child’s hand. Silently, they listened to the shouts and stamps beyond the dining-room door.

Amongst the handful of survivors who had released themselves from the lonely study, the mood was not of anger or threat, but more a febrile anxiety. John Buchanan, brandishing a walking stick, had searched the rest of the house, but apart from the man with the children, now returned to the group, there was nobody upstairs.

The hungry souls were seeking rest or sustenance, seeking comfort and communication, seeking, it seemed, the Torringtons, and were now grouped in the hall facing their smartly-dressed captors stubbornly.

‘We should like to speak to the lady of the house!’ cried a woman.

‘We just want to get on! We’re hungry. We’re so hungry. It was none of our faults!’

‘There, there; we’ll see what can be done,’ said Ernest, wondering, as he looked at her, if she was in fact injured in some way he had failed to discover earlier, or her alarming pallor was simply the after-effects of the accident, and being locked away for so long. ‘I really must apologise,’ he said.

Although he couldn’t speak on behalf of his hosts, he resolved to speak – if not to the unapproachable Mrs Swift, perhaps to Emerald.

‘We’ve waited and waited,’ said another woman, and there were echoes of ‘hungry’ and ‘why’ all around him, in pitiful polyphony.

‘Now, hear this, you people!’ came the strident nasal tones of Traversham-Beechers. ‘Nothing can be gained by moaning. You and I must wait here some brief, undisclosed time!’ They listened attentively. ‘We hope our needs will be met. We trust …’ Here, he paused and of a sudden, there passed over his face a look, briefly – but to Ernest, most powerfully – displayed. A look that very much resembled dread. He went on, ‘… trust God …’ the word rang and hung and halted in the chilly air, ‘… will see our needs are met. Until then, we must be patient. Now, in we go!’ And with that he gestured the open study door once more.

As all the guests were reunited in the dining room, John announced, ‘They are contained!’

‘Bravo, John,’ said Charlotte.

Emerald let go of Smudge’s hand, and addressed them.

‘We have begun our dinner,’ she said solidly; ‘they must have theirs.’

She met Ernest’s encouraging glance.

‘Hear, hear,’ he said.

‘Oh, this is absurd!’ burst out Charlotte.

‘No, Mother, continuing to ignore them is absurd. I won’t stand for it.’

‘Emerald!’

‘Can’t you see it doesn’t do any good? There are more and more of them already! Some must go into the morning room again, and others into the study. And they must be fed,’ she said firmly. ‘You’re very rude.’

Charlotte cared not a jot for rudeness. She had built her life so that she might avoid third-class train carriages and she wasn’t going to wring her hands over those who made use of them now.

‘Just the study, please,’ she sulkily demanded. ‘The morning room is my special room.’

‘They are
all your special rooms
, Mother,’ said Emerald bitterly, but there broke off, to avoid a public argument.

‘How shall we do it?’ asked Patience.

The faces, except Tenterhooks’, who was lapping up the sauces, and Traversham-Beechers’, who was yawning at the ceiling, looked at her expectantly.

‘I dislike troubling you with our domestic affairs, but I think I must,’ said Emerald, with a glance towards Florence Trieves. ‘The maid, Pearl Meadows, is unwell; Robert and his boy have gone to see about these other passengers the Railway are sending. There aren’t many of us here at Sterne. Mrs Trieves is all alone in the kitchen, except for Myrtle, and I’m afraid,’ the rest of the sentence teetered on the tip of her tongue for long seconds before she sent it out, ‘we shall have to go into the kitchen.’

She ignored her mother’s gasp at this atrocious notion but Florence cried, ‘Oh no, Emerald! I can manage.’

‘No, Mrs Trieves. We will help.’

Patience piped up, ‘And me! And I, I mean. Show me an apron and the kitchen door.’

‘Thank you, Patience.’

‘And I,’ said Ernest gruffly.

‘No!’ said Florence, again, feebly.

‘And me, Em. I’ve often helped my mother,’ said John.

‘I’ve never helped mine,’ said Clovis, ‘but count me in.’

‘Good!’ said Charlotte with sudden violence. ‘Then you’ve plenty of hands for your sordid decks. On your birthday! It’s ridiculous. You’ll have a riot on your hands if you start trying to please these ghastly people. Smudge will go to her room, unless you’re going to reintroduce child labour as well! And I shall go to mine. I shan’t expect to be disturbed.’

She turned to the chief amongst their uninvited guests, the insolent Traversham-Beechers.

‘
And you will stay here
,’ she said slowly and – in that instant – showed every tooth, every claw, she had; the very room shrank away from her.

The gentleman, though, was undaunted.

‘Yes, I should think I will dabble about in here for a while,’ he said sleepily, and pulled a long cigar from an inside pocket.

Charlotte turned, sharply, on her heel, held out her hand to a reluctant Smudge, and left them, closing the door behind her.

‘Never mind, she’d only get in the way,’ said Clovis cheerfully, in an undertone to Emerald.

Their attention was caught by the suggestive, rhythmic, sucking sound of Traversham-Beechers lighting his cigar from a candle. Caught between shock and a brand of anarchic admiration, the five young people watched for a moment, scandalised, then: ‘Please,’ said Ernest to Florence politely, ‘lead the way,’ and they set off for the kitchens, leaving the man to his pleasures in a sea of dirty plates.

In the corridor, Myrtle was dispatched to seat the passengers, while the guests set off for the kitchen, with Florence scuttling miserably ahead. They passed the morning room, turned the corner, and the green baize door came into view.

‘Perhaps we’ll have time for a game or two afterwards, with your cake if you’re having one,’ said Patience encouragingly to Emerald as they went.

The household had ceased to be surprised at the survivors’ increasing numbers, concluding that on this runaway evening they could not be expected to keep count.

‘They’re like flies,’ said Myrtle furiously, as she carried in more chairs, banging them down and glaring at the whole ungrateful hoard. She ushered half of them along the corridor to the morning room and persuaded the other half to stay in the study.

They snatched the chairs from her with powerful fingers. They sat about the place preparing to feed, their eyes following Myrtle with glinting brightness as they waited, breathless, for their meal.

Emerald, Patience, Ernest, John and Clovis, all in their evening clothes, all together, stared about the kitchen at the piles of half-prepared food.

Florence would have cried if she had been any younger or less disciplined, but she had not cried for years. Sometimes she felt all her tears – of grief and joy – had been shed for Theodore, and her eyes were dry in their sockets, moving slowly towards that oft-contemplated, dusty death. She imagined little sacks that should be filled with lapping tears, hanging shrivelled between her eyeballs and her brain. But yes, if she had had the tears, she would have cried now at all her hard work being squandered in this low crisis. She did not want to be seen in her kitchen – not like this.

She felt as if she were a grand clock with its back hanging open; the face was mother of pearl, diamonds and gold hands, but inside the casing there were only grimy little cogs and wheels to examine. Can it be this, that had seemed so marvellous? Just these springs? Just these tiny screws? She hung her head.

‘Aprons, please,’ said Emerald brightly, taking strange delight in flying in the face of her mother’s wishes. Assorted plates were piled, wobbling and ready to receive. The helpers stood poised to serve. Florence, brandishing a big knife, loomed over the dishes, the weapon held firmly and aloft, but she made several passes before eventually gritting her teeth and plunging the blade through first the pastry of the Boeuf en Croute, then the Fricasseed rabbit, the fowl pudding… Her massacre was comprehensive but her portions necessarily meagre. What had been a feast for eight was a virtual famine for thirty or more. Had there really been so many before?