The Summer Before the War
“Do sit down, Miss Nash,” said Agatha, indicating a place beside her on a comfortable sofa. “You must still be tired after your journey yesterday.”
“Just a little,” she said. “The stations in London were very hot and crowded.”
Hugh slipped into the room, his crooked bow tie and damp hair betraying his last-minute haste in dressing. No one seemed to notice him, and Beatrice was deeply aware that they were too busy examining her even as they pretended to look elsewhere.
“I never travel by train,” said Lady Emily, breaking an awkward pause. “All the soot and such a crush of vulgar humanity.”
“Yes, one may encounter the occasional vulgar person,” said Beatrice. She kept her face blank and did not look at Hugh, but she was satisfied to hear him rattle a decanter loudly.
“Anyone for more sherry?” he called. The maid, Jenny, stood by the decanters with a small silver tray to carry drinks.
“There’s no need to be abrupt, my dear,” said his aunt. “Do pour Miss Nash a small glass of sherry.”
“But, dear Lady Emily, if you never take a train, however do you get to Scotland?” asked Daniel, lolling in his chair with the carelessness of a child.
“Well, of course I do take a private sleeping car to Scotland,” she replied. “Even so, I have to send two of my maids to give it a thorough cleaning before I go aboard.”
“One would wish to bring one’s own linens, I imagine,” said Mr. Tillingham, tilting his head to one side and pursing his lips. Beatrice wondered if he was making notes for a future novel. “And perhaps a hamper or two?”
“Naturally,” said Lady Emily. “And of course, special cushions for the babies. They used to roll around on the floor and were terribly uncomfortable.” Beatrice lost her firm grasp of the conversational thread at this image and was unable to repress a raised eyebrow.
“Lady Emily raises the most adorable dachshunds,” explained Agatha.
“They travel with me everywhere,” said Lady Emily. “Except here when you dreadful boys are home.” She shook her fan at Daniel, who broke into laughter, and at Hugh, who looked appalled.
“I say, Lady Emily, that was a long time ago,” said Hugh. “I assure you your tiny canines would be quite safe.”
“What on earth did you do, you young scallywags, to upset Lady Emily’s dachshunds?” asked Mr. Tillingham, leaning in conspiratorial manner towards Daniel.
“Well, one time we made a circus and used them as clowns,” said Daniel, in a stage whisper. “And once Hugh decided we should take them ratting in the woods and one of Lady Emily’s beasts caught a sizable vole.”
“I don’t think we need to air our youthful delinquencies, Daniel,” said Hugh, and Beatrice was delighted to see from his blush that Hugh Grange had once been less than perfectly responsible. She liked him the better for it.
“Of course, it is long forgotten,” said Lady Emily. “Though I was sorry to give that one away.”
“You gave him away?” said Daniel. “The ratter king?”
“Heartbreaking, but I could no longer feel quite comfortable looking at his little teeth nibbling bacon from my breakfast plate,” she said. “One has to be so careful about disease.”
“Quite understandable,” said Daniel. While he struggled to hide his amusement, Beatrice noticed that his cousin Hugh looked pained.
“Colonel Wheaton likes to complain that we employ half a footman just to brush away the hair,” said Lady Emily. “But then I find him in his study, reading the newspaper, with a dog under each arm. It takes days to get the smell of his cigar out of their coats.”
“I often think I should get some sort of little dog,” said Mr. Tillingham. “An aggressive terrier, perhaps, to keep away all the unwanted visitors who interrupt my work.”
“I can’t abide people who dislike dogs,” said Lady Emily. “I am especially suspicious of those who prefer cats.” She peered as if Beatrice might be guilty. “There is something too malleable about them, don’t you think?”
“I believe our Mayoress, Mrs. Fothergill, has two rather elegant long-haired Siamese,” said Daniel.
“A very pushing sort of woman,” said Lady Emily. “However, I will hold my tongue tomorrow in order to secure Miss Nash’s position.”
“Not that your position in the school is not secure,” added Agatha. “But Lady Emily hosts an annual tea, with the school governors, the Headmaster and staff, and some of our other dignitaries. We thought it would be a lovely Sunday afternoon introduction to ensure your welcome to the community.”
“Of course, we did not expect you to be so young,” said Lady Emily. Beatrice felt a flush spread across her neck and cheeks as the question of her age, which would not, of course, be asked, hung in the air.
“I am twenty-three,” she said, looking directly at Lady Emily. “I hope I am therefore sufficiently advanced into spinsterhood?”
“I am sure there is no question that you are,” said Agatha.
“Positively ancient,” said Daniel. “Don’t you agree, Hugh?”
“That isn’t what I meant at all,” said Agatha.
“A more wrinkled physiognomy and gray hair might have been expected,” said Hugh. “But I’m sure a few weeks of our local grammar pupils will achieve the desired appearance.”
“I believe the real problem is that Lady Emily and Mrs. Kent present such figures of youth that anyone your age must appear a mere slip of a girl,” said Mr. Tillingham.
“You are being absurd, dear friend,” said Lady Emily, but she looked a little pinker in the face.
“He is being a writer,” said Daniel. “All writers must tell truth to beauty.”
“Obviously poets are compelled to produce excesses of hyperbole,” said Hugh. “I imagine writers merely exaggerate?”
Daniel laughed, and Beatrice saw Mr. Tillingham’s face flicker with annoyance before he too relaxed into a chuckle.
“And thus, with a blunt saw, we are crudely and cruelly dissected by the medical man,” said Mr. Tillingham.
“Well, regardless of age, I am sure Miss Nash will present herself as a modest, dignified woman and show that we have made the right decision,” said Agatha.
“I shall be sure to wear my ugliest dress,” said Beatrice.
“Plain will do,” said Lady Emily, in a severe tone. “We just don’t need another spectacle like our French mistress and her preposterous silk dresses.”
“To be fair, Miss Clauvert is not an Englishwoman,” said Agatha. “It is our good fortune to have a real Frenchwoman.”
“True,” said Lady Emily. “But I’m thankful Miss Nash’s family is of impeccable English lineage.”
“Actually, my mother was American,” said Beatrice, before she could stop herself. She clamped her lips closed in order to resist adding that her father had been disowned by the Marbelys and had disowned them in return for as long as possible.
“An American?” said Lady Emily, in a tone of horrified surprise.
“How delightful,” said Daniel. “Lady Emily is a great admirer of all things American, is she not, Mr. Tillingham?”
“Of course,” said Tillingham. He did not look terribly happy at being reminded of his own citizenship. Beatrice now recognized that his careful articulation bore deliberately little trace of any accent.
“My father is English,” she said. “Though after my mother died, he could never seem to be happy here.”
“Ah, the mysteries of the human heart,” said Mr. Tillingham. He raised a hand into the air, as if about to conduct an unseen orchestra, and everyone paused, as probably he intended, thought Beatrice, in order to await a bon mot from the great mind. “For I long ago found a home and a safe harbor in this tiny corner of England and I can never seem to be happy anywhere else.”
“And we consider you quite one of us, Mr. Tillingham,” said Lady Emily. “I assure you I no longer even think of you as American.”
“Mr. Tillingham is in great demand among the local hostesses,” said Agatha
to Beatrice. “He is quite pestered with invitations.”
“I must be ruthless in declining or I would never dine by my own comfortable fireside,” said Mr. Tillingham. “The public acknowledgment of one’s literary contributions is of course gratifying, but the burden of reputation can be heavy at times.”
“Good thing you don’t have to suffer under such a burden with your poetry, Daniel,” said Hugh. “I shall pray for you to remain unpublished.”
“I have broad shoulders,” said Daniel. “Bring on the fame and the laurels.”
“You may joke, boys,” said Mr. Tillingham. “But wait until yet another local squire leans across the dinner table to ask you loudly whether he might have read anything you’ve written.”
“I know something of what you mean,” said Beatrice. “My father was often asked to explain who he was and what kind of things he wrote. He was always patient.” There was a polite pause, and Beatrice froze, realizing with horror that they thought she was referring to Mr. Tillingham’s earlier failure to recollect her father’s name.
“I, alas, am not as patient perhaps as your father,” said Mr. Tillingham and gave her a smile that eliminated any tension. Beatrice could have kissed him for his unexpected graciousness. “I like to respond that I do not write for the Farmers’ Almanac and so cannot dare to hope that the gentleman has read any of my meager oeuvre.”
“It is far more polite to admit that one doesn’t read,” said Lady Emily. “Who has the time? Of course we have all of Mr. Tillingham’s works in our library. I always give your latest volume pride of place next to my drawing room chair, Mr. Tillingham. I have a special gold bookmark with a Fortuny silk tassel.”
“I am touched,” said Mr. Tillingham.
“If Mr. Tillingham prefers to dine in his own home, we should make an effort to invite him less often, Aunt,” said Hugh. “It would be terrible to think that we distracted him.” He smiled, but Beatrice detected that Hugh was not altogether joking. She wondered why he didn’t like the great man.
“I trust Mr. Tillingham knows he is at liberty to come to dinner anytime and to decline dinner whenever he feels like it,” said Agatha. “We do not stand on ceremony with those we consider family.” She turned to Beatrice and added, “Mr. Tillingham is always writing to me to enquire about the boys and has taken a kind interest in Daniel’s poetry.”
“To help along the next generation of young writers and poets is a duty I consider both sacred and rewarding,” said Mr. Tillingham. “I’m hoping, Daniel, that you will come to dinner and bring me some more poems to read?” He raised a thick eyebrow and gave Daniel a conspiratorial smile.
“I’m afraid they’re hardly in a fit state,” said Daniel, maintaining a languid air of indifference. “But I’m trying to wrestle some life into one or two pieces.”
“I believe Miss Nash also writes,” said Hugh.
“Oh no,” said Beatrice, flustered by an urgent desire to have the great writer offer a smile of interest towards her and the competing wish to heed Agatha Kent’s injunction. “I mean, I have spent the past year editing my father’s personal letters in the hopes of publishing a small volume.” She looked at Mr. Tillingham, whose face showed a hint of relief.
“Collecting and sorting such material is an admirable project for a daughter,” he said. “I’m sure it will be of great interest to your father’s friends and family; and at least it is a sober endeavor and not some flighty female novel.”
“Perhaps Miss Nash also wishes to write a novel?” asked Hugh.
“Miss Nash will be fully occupied by her vocation as a teacher and will have no interest in such frivolous pursuits,” said Lady Emily. Agatha Kent looked at Beatrice with an eyebrow raised in mute hope.
“My teaching duties will be all my concern,” said Beatrice, bitterly disappointed but resigned to the practical.
“Thank the Lord,” said Mr. Tillingham. “There is a great fashion for encouraging young women, especially American women, to think they can write, and I have received several slightly hysterical requests to read such charming manuscripts.”
“And did you?” asked Daniel.
“Goodness no, I would rather cut off my right hand,” said Mr. Tillingham. “I delegated my secretary to compose her own diplomatic replies and to consign the offending pages to the kitchen stove.”
“I thought you were great friends with that American woman who insists on writing even though her position and fortune make it quite unnecessary,” said Lady Emily.
“The lady of whom you speak is in a category by herself,” said Mr. Tillingham. “She does possess a fastidious eye for the narrow milieu of which she writes, and I cannot fault her competence nor argue with her considerable success.”
“Plus she’s very generous, I hear,” said Daniel. “Doesn’t she come down and take you out in her enormous motorcar?”
“Daniel!” said his aunt.
Mr. Tillingham waved his hand to indicate his lack of offense. “I assure you, dear boy, that I am quite capable of accepting friends’ generosity and still telling them exactly what I think of their art,” said Mr. Tillingham. “Indeed I wish it were otherwise, for I have lost friends and chased away a great love or two in my time with what some of them described as my brutish candor.” To Beatrice’s great surprise, he pulled out his large silk pocket square and dabbed at his eyes, which were filling with tears.
“I would never describe you as brutish,” said Daniel. He turned to the room at large and added, “But the last group of poems I showed to Mr. Tillingham was so thoroughly and precisely dismantled that all I had left was a single couplet.”
“It is a curse, but I have never been able to speak anything but the truth when it comes to the written word,” said Mr. Tillingham. “I believe your father felt the same way, my dear.”
“You do remember him?” said Beatrice.
“It is coming to me,” said Mr. Tillingham. “Is it possible that he wrote an absolutely scathing review of my very first play?”
“I believe he did review it,” said Beatrice, blushing.
“Well, he wasn’t the only one, to be sure,” said Tillingham. “But I do remember his analysis was astute enough for me to feel unable to write my usual long and detailed rebuttal.”
“Thank you,” said Beatrice.
“I will look for his book as soon as I get home,” added Tillingham. “And you must come to tea and show me one or two of your father’s more interesting letters.”
Beatrice felt tears sting the backs of her eyes, and she dug her fingernails into her palms to keep from betraying her gratitude. Mr. Tillingham patted her hand, and Beatrice felt Lady Emily’s astonishment.
“Wonderful,” said Agatha. “Remind me to make sure the Headmaster and the Vicar also extend invitations.”
“It is an act of common decency to take turns in relieving the loneliness of the parish’s lady spinsters,” said Lady Emily. “Whenever I’m home, I have two elderly sisters in for bridge on Tuesdays. Perhaps you play, Miss Nash?”
Beatrice struggled to find an acceptable evasion, as she was rather proud of her bridge skills.
“On Tuesdays, Miss Nash will be tutoring some of the grammar boys,” said Agatha smoothly. “I had not wanted to impose on you any more, dear Lady Emily, but an invitation to tea from you, issued publicly in the middle of the garden party, would be just the thing to make our little project unassailable and stop Mrs. Fothergill’s intrigues.”
“Well, if you think it would help,” said Lady Emily, looking somewhat mollified. “I would willingly endure absolute hardship to put Mrs. Fothergill in her place.”
As the dinner gong rang, Beatrice caught sight of Hugh and Daniel exchanging a smothered grin. She suppressed a smile of her own and thought that she would willingly hear herself compared to a hardship just as long as she did not have to join Lady Emily’s parade of spinsters.
The girl who knocked at Beatrice’s bedroom door the next morning did not seem strong enough to carry the heav
y tray on which rested a cup of tea in a florid porcelain cup and a heavy jug of hot water for the washstand. She was hollow in the cheeks and narrow-shouldered, her hair pulled back mercilessly into a single braid. Her dress and apron hung loosely, and her boots looked comically large laced onto such scrawny ankles.
“Cup of tea, miss,” she said. “And I’m to tell you breakfast is under a cover below because Mrs. Turber is gone to church at eight and she hopes you won’t expect her to set God aside for people who use the Sabbath for sleeping late.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?” asked Beatrice.
“I tried, miss, but you didn’t want to stir and I took the tea away cold.” She put the tray on the floor, transferred the jug to the washstand, and brought the tea, her lips clamped in concentration to keep the cup from wobbling on its gilded saucer. Even when Beatrice took the tea from her, the girl did not look up but merely turned away to the tray.
“I’ve never failed to wake up,” said Beatrice, taking a long gulp of hot tea. “I suppose I was tired from traveling.” She was used to the pale dawn hours, the birds’ thin choir accompanying her waking thoughts of her father. Curiously, she did not feel guilty for sleeping so late into the hot morning. And if she was tired, from the travel and all the new impressions around her, at least it was a different kind of exhaustion than she had felt all year; more a good physical tiredness and less the enervating lassitude that comes with hopelessness.
“Mr. Puddlecombe never got up before noon on a Sunday,” said the girl. She shuffled her absurd boots, and her cheeks flushed an unflattering red.
“What’s your name?” asked Beatrice. The girl gave her a sideways glance and seemed to be gathering her courage to speak.
“I’m so sorry, miss. I’ll call out louder next time if you want,” she said. “But if you get up early, Mrs. Turber will make me go to church too, and then it’s very hard to get to all the polishing before lunch, and I get Sunday afternoon off but only if I’m all done, and my mum is poorly and needs me and…my name’s Abigail.”
“How old are you, Abigail?”