The Secret Countess

  ‘She seems to be a most capable girl,’ said Minna.

  ‘Oh, she is, she is! Muriel never dithers like some girls. She knows her own mind.’

  ‘And she’s so very beautiful,’ said Minna.

  ‘Yes, indeed. That creamy skin.’

  ‘And her eyes. So very blue.’

  ‘She carries herself well, too,’ said the dowager. ‘It’s so unusual these days to see a girl that doesn’t slouch.’

  A silence fell. Minna, about to embark on a sentence in praise of Muriel’s good health, abandoned it, aware that she was beginning to sound distinctly agricultural. Both women were light eaters, but they paused now to order crumpets.

  ‘How’s Ollie?’ asked the dowager. ‘We haven’t seen her for a while.’

  ‘She’s fine.’ It was Minna’s turn, now, to push away her anxieties. The bridesmaid’s dress had arrived and Ollie had seemed pleased. It was going to be all right, surely? ‘She’s looking forward very much to Hugh coming home. He gets back tomorrow with this new friend who seems to be a paragon of all the virtues. Just as well, with Honoria Nettleford and her brood as house guests!’

  The dowager smiled. ‘I can’t thank you enough for that. Honoria and the Herrings under one roof really wouldn’t have done!’

  ‘I’d have had Lavinia too, but she’ll want to be with Muriel,’ said Minna. ‘And everything’s settled for the ball. I’ve got Bartorolli to play, did I tell you? Snatched him from the Duchess of Norton with an hour to spare! Quite a coup! Oh, and you won’t forget to let me have Anna, will you. I’ve an absolute spate of foreigners coming.’

  ‘No, indeed.’ The dowager’s face had softened at Anna’s name. ‘Proom’s arranged for her to get over to Heslop early so that Hawkins can instruct her in her duties. It’ll mean someone else will have to dress Muriel and I’m afraid she won’t like it but—’ The dowager broke off. ‘Oh, good, there’s Hannah! I haven’t seen her for days.’

  Hannah Rabinovitch had entered the lounge, loaded with parcels, and was picking her way between the tables, looking for one that was free. The dowager rose, waving one of her chiffon scarves. ‘Here, Hannah! We’re over here!’

  Hannah looked up and saw her. She took a few eager steps forward – and paused, a deep flush covering her face. Then abruptly she turned, walked quickly back to the door, and vanished.

  The dowager sank back into her chair, her eyes smarting with sudden tears. There are greater griefs than rejection by a valued friend, but none which wound more instantly.

  ‘She cut me, Minna! Hannah cut me dead! I don’t understand it – I’ve never known Hannah do anything like that before.’ She tried to pick up her cup, found that her hands weren’t steady, and put it down again. ‘Could it be that Muriel hasn’t thanked her for the wedding present? They sent an absolutely priceless dinner service. But Muriel swore she’d write and anyway Hannah isn’t like that; she’s the least stuffy person I know. And I won’t see her now till the wedding . . .’

  Minna hesitated. Susie had come to see them the day after Muriel’s note had reached The Towers. She’d been quiet and resigned on her own behalf, but when she spoke about her mother there had been something in her voice that had sent Tom, later that night, stamping up and down the great hall like a madman, raking his red thatch of hair and spitting fire. ‘If it was anyone else in the world but Rupert I’d turn the whole thing in, even now, but I can’t do it to him. Oh, God, I could kill her; I could wring her neck in cold blood. How dare she, how dare she?’

  Minna had made up her mind. ‘I don’t think Hannah is coming to the wedding, Mary,’ she said quietly.

  The dowager stared at her friend, suddenly feeling old and stupid and utterly at sea. ‘What do you mean? They’re not going to be away, are they? Surely Hannah would have told me?’

  Minna searched for words that carried no overtones of malice. ‘Muriel felt that . . . a Christian ceremony would embarrass them. That they would feel . . . out of place. So she said they should not feel it necessary to come. I’m sure she meant it kindly, but of course . . .’

  The dam of breeding and reserve that had sustained the dowager now broke with a devastating suddenness, leaving her shaking with misery and despair.

  ‘She means nothing kindly, Minna. Nothing! She is a hateful, spiteful, dreadful girl. And Rupert will never jilt her. From the age of three I’ve never known him break his word.’ Over the congealed crumpets she stretched a hand out to her friend. ‘Oh, God, he’s going to be so unhappy! What am I going to do, Minna? What am I going to do?’

  Rupert had been closeted for nearly an hour with Mr Frisby, the senior partner of Frisby, Frisby and Blenkinsop, who had handled the affairs of his family for generations. The business was long and involved, for the documents relating to Rupert’s marriage needed expert and detailed scrutiny. There were the settlements drawn up by Muriel’s advisers to examine, there was a new will to be made and, in between, Mr Frisby’s congratulations and happy enquiries to receive. For of course Rupert’s marriage to an heiress could not fail to delight his solicitor, who for years had coupled deep respect and admiration for the Fraynes with anxiety about the state of their finances.

  ‘And how is Miss Hardwicke liking this part of the world?’ Mr Frisby asked now, while they waited for the clerk to bring in another box of documents.

  ‘Oh, very much,’ Rupert answered with his friendly smile.

  He got up and moved over to the window, irked by the hours spent indoors on such a lovely day. The square was quiet in the early afternoon. An old woman sat on a seat sunning herself; a handful of children played hopscotch on the cobbles . . .

  Suddenly, Rupert stiffened. A girl in a dark coat and skirt was hurrying in a purposeful manner across the far side: a girl whose quick, light walk as of an accidentally earthbound angel was appallingly familiar. Now she was slowing down, hesitating, standing looking upwards at the windows of a shop. He narrowed his eyes, making out the lettering.

  The clerk came back with a box file, which he set down on the desk. Mr Frisby opened it, began to search among the documents . . .

  Anna had gone into the shop. The door had closed behind her. The minutes passed.

  ‘Ah, this is the one we want, I think,’ said the solicitor, taking out a sheet of foolscap. ‘Now if you would just look at paragraph three, my lord. In my view—’

  He broke off, utterly amazed. The Earl of Westerholme, always so polite, so meticulous, had gained the door and, without a word of apology or explanation, run out into the street.

  René had finished his combing.

  ‘To here?’ he enquired, indicating a place level with Anna’s throat.

  ‘Shorter,’ said Anna, placing two fingers on her jaw, just below the lobe of her ear. ‘To here.’

  René nodded. ‘Scissors, Elsie!’ he commanded.

  Elsie resumed her scuffling and produced the required article.

  ‘Not those, you half-wit,’ said René, his French accent slipping badly. ‘The big ones.’

  Elsie returned to the trolley, circled it, pounced, and eventually produced the big ones. At which moment the door of the shop was thrown violently open, a peremptory voice said: ‘Stop! Stop that at once!’ – and a man, apparently in the last stages of lunacy, took two strides across the room and jerked René’s arm away, sending the scissors clattering on to the floor.

  René stopped. It had taken him some moments to recognize in the wild-eyed, breathless and clearly insane young man, the handsome Earl of Westerholme back from the war. Having done so, he had no desire to cross him and retreated to the far side of the shop, his sharp nose twitching with curiosity and the hope of scandal.

  ‘I told Proom – I made it absolutely clear – that I will not allow you to cut your hair.’

  Anna, sitting captive and encircled by her tresses, had turned to see whether the crazed image in the mirror could be real. Now, her tobacco-coloured eyes wide with amazement, she addressed her employer.

  ‘Oh? Really
? You forbid it?’ The last lingering traces of Selina Strickland vanished. Her face had grown pale with what Pinny would unhesitatingly have labelled as temper. ‘It will no doubt amuse you to tell me why?’

  ‘You are in my employ,’ said Rupert, who was aware that he had taken leave of his senses and did not, at that moment, greatly care. ‘None of the servants at Mersham are permitted to have short hair. It is against the regulations.’

  ‘What regulations?’ said Anna sweetly.

  ‘The regulations I have drawn up. They will be issued tomorrow.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Anna. ‘I resign. I will forfeit a week’s wages and leave tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ The madness began to drain from Rupert. He suddenly looked like a man at the end of his endurance; the skin tight over his cheekbones, the eyes shadowed. When he spoke again it was in a voice so low that Anna thought she had misheard him.

  ‘I must have something, Anna,’ said the Earl of Westerholme.

  She felt the ground open beneath her feet. Desperately she groped for her former rage, trying to claw her way back to normality. ‘Short hair is very modern. One must move with the times.’ The banal sentences lay where they had fallen. ‘I wish to be attractive for your wedding,’ she went on pleadingly, lifting her face to his. ‘Is that a crime?’

  ‘Ah, yes; my wedding.’ The word reared up to meet him, banishing the last traces of lunacy. He became aware of René staring at him salaciously, of Elsie, with her mouth open, clutching a towel . . . ‘You will be very attractive for my wedding,’ he said lightly. ‘For my funeral also, je vous assure.’ He lifted a hand, laid it for a moment on the rich, dark tresses where they mantled her shoulders, then turned it, letting the backs of his fingers run upwards against the shining waves. For an instant she felt his touch on her cheek; then he stepped back. ‘There, that was my ration for all eternity. People have died for less, I dare say.’ He turned and walked over to René. ‘I must apologize for having interrupted you,’ he said, taking out a sovereign. ‘Perhaps you will be kind enough to accept this as compensation for any inconvenience I have caused you.’

  ‘Thank you, your lordship. Thank you very much.’ René, greatly pleased, was all bows and obsequiousness.

  ‘You will now cut mademoiselle’s hair exactly as she instructs,’ said the Earl of Westerholme – and was gone.

  Anna, left alone, sat mute and trembling, staring into the mirror at a girl she did not know, while René picked up the scissors, flourished them, advanced . . .

  It was Potter who found Anna on her return from Maidens Over. He came across her in the stables, one arm flung round the white mare’s neck, her head pressed against the horse’s shoulder. Anna’s hat lay where it had fallen and she was still as stone.

  Potter looked at the girl and proceeded to remove her. Had she been suffering from spavins or a slipped stifle, he would have been happy to deal with her himself. Anna, however, did not have spavins and whatever ailed the girl was clearly a matter for Mrs Park or Louise. And retrieving her hat from the straw, he led the dazed and aquiescent girl back to the house.

  The head groom’s lack of interest in current hairstyles was absolute. It was therefore with surprise and irritation that he saw Anna, on entering the kitchen, become surrounded by a bevy of excited and chattering girls. However, he soon put a stop to this fuss and clatter.

  ‘She’s had a bit of a shock, I’d say,’ he said aside to Mrs Park.

  But the kind cook had already seen. ‘Now that’s enough noise, everyone,’ she admonished them. ‘Mildred, get the kettle on.’ She pulled out a chair. ‘Come along, dear, and sit down. What you need is a nice cup of tea.’

  Supper in the servants’ hall was a silent meal that night. Everyone was behaving very well: not a reproach, not a question had crossed their lips – and indeed only a professional sadist would have found it possible to reproach Anna in the state she was in. Still, it was a disappointment, no good pretending that it wasn’t. As for Anna, she sat between Peggy and Louise, very carefully chewing up pieces of roast beef and equally carefully swallowing them because Pinny had said that no food must be left uneaten on the plate and making, in the intervals of this arduous task, conversation of a quite devastating politeness. Even Proom, sitting magisterially at the head of the table, was unnerved by his housemaid’s reversal to her early upbringing. It had never been necessary for Anna to ‘make’ conversation before, it had bubbled from her in a never-ending spring. To silence Anna had been Proom’s problem, and he now sat frowning and exchanging glances with Mrs Park, whose concerned and caring gaze had hardly left Anna’s face since the girl’s return.

  Painstakingly, Anna exhausted the topic of the peace celebrations in London, the question of Home Rule for Ireland – and embarked on a discussion of the weather. Occasional convulsive movements of her narrow throat indicated the end point of another piece of successful mastication.

  ‘It will rain tomorrow, I think?’ said Anna.

  And Louise, curbing for once her acerbic tongue, agreed that most probably, tomorrow, it would.

  While the servants were at supper, Muriel was preparing to address her fiancé on a topic of considerable importance.

  For some time, Muriel had been wondering when best to disclose to Rupert certain things of an intimate nature which Dr Lightbody, during their recent lunch at Fortman’s, had most tactfully explained to her. And it had occurred to her that on his return from Maidens Over, reminded by his solicitor of her financial generosity, he would be in a suitably receptive mood.

  Rupert, however, had not yet come in and it was to an empty chair that Muriel, determined to be word-perfect before his arrival, addressed her opening remarks.

  ‘Dearest,’ she began, ‘I have something . . . a little personal to say to you.’ Pausing for the imagined look of eager interest directed at her by Rupert, she resumed the rehearsal. ‘It is about our intimate life together,’ she continued. ‘I want—’ She broke off. ‘We both want, do we not . . . to have perfect children? Children who will be worthy of their great inheritance?’

  Another pause for Rupert’s enthusiastic concurrence.

  ‘Well, it so happens,’ Muriel’s lips curved into a beguiling smile, ‘that Dr Lightbody has studied the matter in great detail and he has explained to me that it would be wrong – indeed disastrous – if you were to approach me at any time. Like an animal.’

  As if on cue, Baskerville, patiently awaiting his master in the corridor, gave a loud and desperate moan. Muriel frowned. Where was Rupert? Surely he must be back by now?

  She cleared her thoat. ‘There are times, you see, connected with the waxing of the moon which are . . . favourable. And it’s during those times alone that one may expect to conceive a totally unflawed human being. Whereas—’

  Another moan from Baskerville. Muriel, her irritation mounting, tried once more. If that wretched animal would shut up she’d get it right.

  ‘Whereas at other times . . . merely, I mean, to gratify the lower instincts and—’

  But Baskerville’s loneliness and frustration had become uncontainable. Raising his head, he shattered the silence with a howl of such pain and anguish as would have done credit to King Lear. And suddenly unable to control her fury, Muriel opened the door and, as the dog turned his entreating, bloodshot eyes towards her, she kicked out at him hard with the heel of her spiky shoe.

  Anna had finished with the rain, its possible effects on the begonias of Mr Cameron, the likelihood of subsequent flooding. Looking down at her plate she perceived that the unfocused splodges she had been devouring were, in fact, vegetables and meat. Another whole course to go, then . . .

  ‘Soon it will be time to begin the grouse shooting, will it not?’

  A sudden, violent thump against the door of the servants’ hall interrupted her. A second and louder thump achieved its objective. The door burst open and, in concerted amazement, the staff looked up at the figure thus revealed.

  ‘That I should live to se
e the day!’ said James. ‘That great, drooling snob showing his face down ’ere!’

  Torn between despair and embarrassment, between loneliness and shame, the earl’s dog stood before them, his great head raking the room. He had done it, the unspeakable thing. The degradation, the horror of it, was behind him – and now where was she? Had it all been in vain; the debasement, the agony, the choice?

  But no, it was all right. He’d seen her. She was there. She would make whole what was broken, console him for his master’s absence, would understand his imperative need to be scratched now, this minute, and for a long time in that special place behind his ear. To show too much joy in a place such as this would be unseemly but, as he padded towards her, his tail was extended in a manner which would make wagging possible should all go as expected. Anna just had time to pull back her chair before he was upon her, butting and blowing, letting his head sink, at last, with a moan of relief on to her lap.

  She put up a hand to scratch him, and as she bent forward the pins, jabbed ill-temperedly back on her head by the frustrated René, loosened, sending a strand of her uncut hair forward across her shoulders.

  ‘Oh, Baskerville,’ said Anna – and only then began to cry.

  12

  Inner peace now descended on Baskerville, who found his new life of abasement below stairs a beguiling and hitherto undiscovered world of the senses. It did not, however, descend on the focus of his adoration, Anna Grazinsky.

  Anna had not caught so much as a glimpse of the earl since he’d walked out of René’s shop in Maidens Over, which made her suppose that he, too, was avoiding any place where they might meet. Worked off her feet, as were all the maids, Anna had in addition to act as handmaiden to the incessant bodily horticulture with which Muriel prepared for her Great Day. Packs of oatmeal and buttermilk had to be poured over Muriel’s white limbs, purées of soft fruit to be smeared on her face. Pummice-stoning Muriel’s elbows, massaging egg-white into her scalp, applying an amazing quantity of sliced cucumber to her eyelids as she floated in the bath kept Anna in a state of bemused exhaustion from dawn to dusk. For the rest, she kept silence. Only her eyes betrayed her wonderment that love, when it came at last, should be so physical, so exhausting and so sad.