The Secret Countess

  But of course it was wrong. Oh, one could find reasons, perhaps. Easy to say that if his parents had been able to show that they loved him, if the girl he’d asked to marry him hadn’t laughed in his face, he’d have been different. Those were just excuses, thought the humiliated old man, while Isolde died and the gay and beguiling ghosts continued to walk inside his head.

  The parlourmaids at his club, the tips of their delectable, shell-pink ears peeping from beneath their caps as they bent down to serve . . . The hoity-toity ladies’ maids in rustling black silk . . . And down in the kitchen another world, hard to penetrate but glorious, with the flushed, busty and bustling girls and the delicious smells of the food caught in their white-bibbed aprons and later (if Fate was kind and they were willing) in their loosened hair . . .

  Isolde was dead. Uncle Sebastien rose and took the needle from the record.

  It was over.

  There was a knock at the door. Not Mary, he hoped. The dowager, when she learned what had befallen him, had offered to take him with her to the Mill House. He’d refused, of course. There were only three bedrooms; he’d be impossibly in her way with his music and his insomnia. It wasn’t even as though Mary was really his niece. He’d already been living at Mersham, a beached-up middle-aged bachelor, when she came there as a bride. She owed nothing to her dead husband’s uncle. No, he wasn’t as selfish as that but, all the same, he hoped it wasn’t Mary. If she came now he might just weaken . . .

  ‘Come in.’

  A dark, enquiring head, a questioning: ‘You are not busy, sir?’ A curtsy.

  Anna. He smiled. The dowager was right, he had not laid a finger on Anna. Too much of a snob, he told himself, for he had known her at once for what she was. Yet with this girl he felt none of the constraints he sometimes felt with women of his own class. And, as she stood before him, he understood what Rupert could not do: why the other maids, so quick to peck out an outsider, accepted her. For all her intelligence and breeding, Anna had something of their essence: a lack of self-regard, of priggery, a deep and selfless capacity for service.

  ‘Miss Hardwicke is out and I have finished my work downstairs so Lady Westerholme has sent me to see if you require anything,’ said Anna, paraphrasing the dowager’s anguished: ‘Go to Mr Frayne, Anna,’ as she met her in the passage. She came closer. ‘You are sad?’

  ‘No . . . no,’ said Uncle Sebastien, wondering what it would be like to have a daughter such as this. ‘It’s just . . . well, you may have heard, I’m to have a nurse. Miss Hardwicke feels I need looking after . . . that it’s too much for the maids to keep carrying trays. It’s very thoughtful of her.’

  Anna nodded and tried to give him the concept back in an endurable form. ‘Nurses are so beautiful,’ she said. ‘And they have such lovely uniforms, caps and cloaks and everything so starched and crisp.’

  ‘This one is middle-aged and sensible. I’m going on a diet, too.’

  Even Anna was daunted by this prospect. Then she came and slipped to her knees by his side and said, ‘Please will you play for me? Not the gramophone. You, yourself. The Waldstein Sonata, perhaps, because I love it so much and particularly the last movement where the hands cross?’

  The old man shook his head. ‘I can’t, Anna. I can’t play properly any more.’

  ‘Please,’ said Anna, knowing that he must be led into his place of refuge – and waited.

  Forgetting his own troubles, Uncle Sebastien looked at her, noting the weary droop of the shoulders, the dark smudges under her eyes, and something else, something that had not been there, he thought, when first she came to Mersham – a look, almost, of bewilderment, of puzzlement, as though she was troubled by something she did not yet understand.

  ‘If you’ll play with me?’ he said cunningly. ‘I have the Schubert duets. What about the Fantasia in F?’

  ‘Ah, yes!’ Her face was suddenly transfigured. ‘But I cannot play with you, it is impossible.’

  ‘Not Selina Strickland, I hope. Because—’

  ‘No.’ She sighed. ‘I shall be gone so soon that it doesn’t matter, I think. But you are a professional.’

  In silence, Uncle Sebastien held out his hands, bent and swollen with rheumatism and age.

  ‘Yes, you are right,’ said Anna quietly. ‘God understands these things. Come.’

  And so they played some of the world’s loveliest piano music – the exiled homesick girl, the humiliated, tired old man. Not properly. Better than that.

  The next day, after taking up Mr Frayne’s tea tray, Peggy came back to the kitchens heaving with an almost operatic rage.

  ‘When I got up the stairs there was this blinkin’ great cow all done up in white overalls met me at the door an’ wouldn’t let me past. “All trays are to be put down on the table outside from now on,” she said.’ Peggy’s mimicry of the nurse’s genteel tones was accurate and savage.

  Anna turned. ‘Was she beautiful?’ she asked, clutching at straws.

  ‘Beautiful! You must be joking. A nose like a hatchet and a huge black wart with whiskers on it.’

  Anna sighed. Baskerville’s wart, contrasting so poignantly with the blond undulations of his cheeks, was one of his greatest assets, but she could see that it might not be the same for a lady.

  ‘None of us are allowed in the room from now on,’ raged Peggy, ‘not when Mr Frayne is in it.’

  ‘Well, you used to grumble enough about the way he carried on,’ said Louise. ‘I’d have thought you’d be pleased.’

  Peggy bit her lip. She seemed to be terribly upset. ‘’e didn’t mean any harm,’ she said.

  ‘He’d never push it too far,’ echoed Pearl. ‘A proper gentleman he was, really.’

  ‘Crikey, you talk as if he was dead,’ said Louise.

  ‘’e might as well be,’ said Peggy, and spoke truer than she knew.

  While Mersham was preparing for the wedding, Heslop was no less busy preparing for the ball.

  Heslop’s butler, Mr Hawkins, had been trained by Proom himself and he brought to his work an iron rigour and indomitable sense of style. At Heslop, The Times was still ironed before it reached the breakfast table; the footmen, their hair powdered, wore their claret-coloured knee breeches and swallow tail coats even when the family dined alone; Monsieur Bourget, the chef, throwing off quenelles fricassées and temperaments with equal abandon, defended his kitchens, with their scurrying retinue of minions, as if they were Fort Knox. If Minna yearned sometimes for the simplicity of her American childhood or the easier ways of Mersham, she knew better than to interfere, and Heslop ran like clockwork.

  Now, as she planned the ball in honour of Muriel Hardwicke with her housekeeper, her steward, her butler and her cook, no one could have guessed that the task afforded her anything but pleasure and delight.

  And yet the truth was very different.

  Welcoming Ollie back from her day in town, Minna had naturally been eager to know how her stepdaughter had enjoyed her day.

  ‘Oh, it was lovely, Mummy. It was simply lovely!’ Ollie’s flushed face had been full of delight yet Minna, with her sixth sense for the child’s well-being, had been uneasy.

  ‘Was your dress very beautiful?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’ Minna, bracing herself for details, watched with surprise as Ollie’s bright eyes slid away from her own. ‘And then I saw Pupsik who is a sausage dog and he’s got a huge diamond right inside his stomach and the lady let me hold him and he fell asleep on my lap and snored and snored and—’

  ‘Pupsik? Is that the Lady Lavinia’s dog? Did she bring him to the Ritz?’

  ‘No, I didn’t go to lunch with them.’ Ollie’s face had gone blank again, a look of defeat flickering in her eyes.

  Still trying to make sense of all this, Minna asked, ‘But why, honey?’ Her voice sharpened. ‘Surely they didn’t forget about you?’

  ‘No, they wanted me to come but . . . I wasn’t hungry. Well, later I was hungry and I ate four piroshki that Anna’s mother made and some littl
e eggs that fishes lay, all black and slithery, but Pinny wouldn’t let me have any vodka,’ said Ollie, frowning at the only cloud on an otherwise flawless afternoon.

  ‘But where was this, Ollie?’

  ‘At the Russian Club. Anna took me there. It’s where she goes, and her friends. It’s lovely and Cousin Sergei was there and he has white, white teeth and he spoke to me in French and afterwards he gave me a piggyback to the taxi and he said—’

  She was off again. Minna let her run on and said no more about the fitting or the bridesmaid’s dress. But that night she tackled Tom.

  ‘Tom. I can’t understand what happened in London. Why did Ollie spend the afternoon with Anna? I thought she was supposed to be having lunch with you and the bridesmaids?’

  ‘Yes. well . . .’ Tom’s shifty expression was so ridiculously like Ollie’s that Minna, worried as she was, managed a smile. ‘She got very tired, you know how it is in those hot shops. So Anna took her off to her place – it was her day off, you see, and I’d given her a lift to town. And I must say I was most grateful to her because it was absolutely grim at the Ritz. You can’t imagine what those girls are like.’

  And Tom flushed. Whether or not the hot, sharp imprint that he had felt while eating his vichyssoise, wedged between a screen and a potted palm, had or had not been the Lady Lavinia’s knee, the whole thing had been a nightmare. Only for Rupert would he have endured the company of two women who might have been hand-picked for all that was most objectionable in the female sex. And in the hope of diverting his stepmother he began, most entertainingly, to tell her about his lunch.

  But though Minna listened with amusement, it was impossible to deflect her from any anxiety that touched her stepdaughter and when she had finished laughing and commiserating with Tom, she said, ‘But all the same, something must have gone wrong at that fitting. You know how Ollie went on and on about her dress and how wonderful Muriel was and now suddenly she won’t talk about it at all. She just shuts up like a clam. And though she obviously had a lovely time with Anna, I feel that underneath she’s had some kind of shock.’

  Tom was silent. Muriel was Rupert’s chosen bride. Living at Mersham, she would be their closest neighbour and Minna would find it impossible not to be involved and friendly. There was no point in making mischief. So he shook his head and said: ‘Nothing happened, Mother. As far as I am aware it all went perfectly well.’

  Minna stared at her stepson. The Byrnes were bruising riders, passionate lovers and gallant soldiers. As liars, however, they had always been bottom of the class.

  ‘Tom, I try not to fuss about Ollie, not to pamper her. But what she has to deal with is not easy. If anything goes wrong she can become bitter and twisted for life. And to help her, I have to know, I have to have the facts. What did happen at Fortman’s?’

  So Tom told her.

  Minna said nothing then or later. No breath of criticism escaped her lips and she continued to prepare for the ball as if Muriel were a beloved daughter or dear friend. Only once, as she stepped into her huge, cavernous kitchens and Monsieur Bourget rushing forward, said excitedly: ‘I ’ave just ’eard that Miss ’ardwicke eats nothing that ’as in it alcohol so I cannot cook, I cannot function, I cannot exist!’ Minna, forgetting herself for the first and only time, said, ‘Miss Hardwicke will eat anything that is served to her in this house. Anything.’

  The news that the ball was to be in fancy dress had profoundly depressed Lord Byrne, who had at first been convinced that his wife was joking.

  ‘You’re not serious, Min? You mean I’m to dress up as some ridiculous cowboy or something? I won’t do it!’

  ‘Muriel asked me, Harry. She has a dress she particularly wants to wear.’

  ‘Well, let her wear it then. But you can’t expect me to go gallivanting round my own place making a complete idiot of myself.’

  ‘I thought maybe you could wear one of the military uniforms out of the costume gallery. They’re really not so different from your dress uniform for the Cold-streams. And it would please her so much.’

  ‘Not sure that I want to please her all that much,’ snorted Lord Byrne. ‘Met poor little Miss Tonks coming out of the church today when I went to see the sexton about old Hunston’s grave. Seems Muriel doesn’t like her flower arrangements – says they’re too countrified. Won’t have “The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden” either, Morland tells me. Got Miss Frensham trying to read some newfangled hymn and she’s as blind as a bat, poor soul.’

  Minna sighed. She had not told her husband what Muriel had said to Ollie, but the fear that Muriel had done some real and permanent damage to the child was always present in her mind.

  Lord Byrne looked at his wife. He’d married her blind, knowing nothing about her except that she had a quiet voice, a sensible manner and some spare cash. Now, eight years later, he would have died for her without a second’s hesitation. To dress up as a hussar in Wellington’s army would be harder, but he would do it.

  ‘What about Tom?’ he asked. ‘Does he know about all this dressing up?’

  Minna nodded. ‘I’m relying on Ollie to bring him round. Hugh’s the one who’s made most fuss. He actually got the headmaster to let him ring from Craigston to complain. The friend he’s bringing down doesn’t have anything to dress up in. So I said their cadet uniform would be all right.’

  Lord Byrne nodded. ‘Rabinovitch won’t like it,’ he said darkly, allowing himself a moment of glee.

  Lord Byrne was right. Rabinovitch didn’t like it. Informed by Hannah that he was to attend the ball at Heslop in fancy dress, Rabinovitch turned his liquid frog eyes on his wife and said: ‘Hannerle, make not the stupid jokes.’

  ‘I don’t joke, Leo. Minna has asked that we dress up. It is for Miss Hardwicke who wishes to be the Pompadour.’

  ‘And because some stupid shiksa wishes to be—’

  ‘Leo! Miss Hardwicke is a most charming girl.’

  The conversation now descended into rapid and agitated Yiddish, ending, as was to be expected, in defeat for Leo, who agreed to add a red cummerbund to his evening clothes provided it was understood that this, and this alone, would turn him into a bullfighter.

  ‘But no sombrero! Absolutely no sombrero,’ said Leo, going down fighting.

  Surprisingly it was Susie, usually so easy-going and uncomplicated, who proved difficult, stating that she had no intention of making a fool of herself to please that opinionated blancmange who had ensnared Rupert.

  ‘Susie!’ said her mother, deeply shocked.

  But Susie, to whom Tom had fled after his day in London, was unrepentant. In the end, however, she too yielded, seeing how much it meant to her mother; for Hannah Rabinovitch, like Minna Byrne, was a woman who reaped as she had sown.

  It was while Susie was bending her usual, quiet attention to the problem of whether she would look less ridiculous as a gypsy or a shepherdess, that a maid entered with a letter on a salver.

  Hannah opened it. ‘It’s from Mersham. From Muriel,’ she said, pleased and eager, and began to read. ‘She thanks us most kindly for the wedding present.’

  Leo, who had just paid the staggering bill for the six-hundred-piece Potsdam dinner service, was heard to murmur that he was glad to hear it.

  ‘What is it, Mother?’

  Something in his daughter’s voice made Leo lift his head.

  Hannah was standing by the window, the letter in her hand. She looked, suddenly, immensely, unutterably weary and as old as one of the mourning, black-clad women in the Cossack-haunted village of her youth. And indeed the hideous thing that had crept out from beneath Muriel’s honeyed, conventional phrases was as old, as inescapable, as time itself.

  It is always a mistake to go back – and to go back to a place where one has been wholly happy is foolishness indeed.

  Knowing this, Rupert was nevertheless badly shaken by the intensity of the memories which gripped him. He had survived well enough at Eton, but it was at Cambridge that he entered his heritage. It
was here that he had discovered his passion for scholarship, here that he learned to excel at the solitary sports he so greatly preferred to the endless team games of his adolescence: here, above all, that he had learned the meaning of friendship.

  Now, crossing Trinity Great Court, passing the shabby rooms on Q staircase with the carved motto on the mantelpiece (“Truth thee shalt deliver: it is no drede’) which had been his own, he walked through a gallery of ghosts. On the rim of this fountain, Con Grainger, deeply drunk and wearing striped pyjamas had declaimed, verbatim, Demosthenes’ Second Philip pic, before falling senseless into the water. Over that ridge of roof, now bathed in sunshine, Naismith, besotted with love for an Amazonian physicist from Girton, had climbed at night to hold hopeless court beneath her red-brick tower. Naismith had been killed outright within a month of reaching France – luckier than Con, perhaps, who still lay, shell-shocked and three-quarters blind in a Sussex hospital. And Potts, the brilliant biochemist who had kept a lonely beetroot respiring in a tank . . . Potts, who was a ‘conchie’, and had been handed a white feather by an old lady in Piccadilly the week before he’d taken his stretcher across the lines to fetch back one of the wounded and been blown to pieces by a mine . . .

  Rupert walked on through the arch on the far side and made his way down to the river, only to be led by its lazy, muddy, unforgettable smell into another bygone world: of punts moored behind willows, of picnics at Byron’s pool – and girls.

  But this, too, was forbidden country now and turning, Rupert made his way back to the master’s lodge, where he had been bidden to take sherry before luncheon at high table.

  Later in hall, among the napery and fine glass, the ghosts crept quietly away. Here time really had stood still. Kerry and Warburger were still splenetically dismembering a colleague’s ill-considered views on Kant; Battersley was still laughing uproariously at his own appalling puns; the fish pie was still the best in England.