Old Mrs Winship’s funeral was held next week. James and Major Fenway returned for it from Edinburgh, and Isa came over from Tinnis Hall; Meg was too near her time to be able to venture.
Alvey was delighted to see Isa, and was interested to observe that, though basically she remained wholly unchanged—still as round-shouldered, stooping, short-sighted, and untidy as ever—yet she had somehow, during the course of her travels, contrived to become distinguished. The untidy clothes were of excellent quality and cut, the untidy hair dressed in a careless, but fashionable, mode, and when Isa wished to peer away into the distance, she balanced a tortoise-shell lorgnette on the eagle’s-beak of a nose inherited from her grandmother, and squinted through the glass with an air of absent-minded haughtiness which was entirely accidental but impressive in effect.
She greeted Alvey with warm affection.
“How delighted I am to see you! I was so cast down when I heard you had left Birkland, and so happy to receive your letter from Newcastle. I have a thousand things to tell you. And, fortunately, I am able to remain for a week or so; Louisa has come to quarter herself at Tinnis Hall.” She gave a sniff, reminiscent of her grandmother. “It seems that Liverpool is not a very comfortable town; so, until Lieutenant Dunnifage can prepare a suitable abode for his bride, Louisa prefers to avail herself of the Chibburns’ hospitality. But now, come, tell me about yourself. Poor grandmother! I am sorry not to see her again. Though she always put me in a fright. And Parthie! There is a thing! She was always so devouringly anxious to grow up and enjoy adult privileges; and look what it has led to. I hope, at least, that she did so on her wedding journey; that Mr Thropton indulged her and gave her a few treats.”
“I very much doubt it,” said Alvey, who found it desperately painful and guilt-inducing to contemplate Parthie’s wedding journey—in that bleak weather, with no comforts, escorted by that repulsive man—staying at second- or third-rate country inns, with no female to aid or advise her. Parthie, who had always been accustomed to spoiling and self-indulgence. Imagination faltered at the details. “Wretched girl,” Alvey said. “I feel hideously remorseful, now, that I did not take any pains to befriend her. If I had realized that her disagreeable nature was due to ill-health—that her span was to be so short—”
Isa said firmly, “Just because people are unfortunate cannot make us love them.” And, as so often, Alvey was impressed by her rock-bottom commonsense, which made her own guilty self-questionings appear little better than false sentimentality.
James, informed by his father that Alvey was not his sister; indeed, no relation at all, seemed, during the first day of his return to Birkland, utterly aghast and appalled at this bizarre situation. He eyed Alvey as if she were a basilisk, liable to strike him blind if provoked.
Alvey endured this in patience for twenty-four hours; then, seizing the chance of a moment when they were alone together in the drawing-room, she said, “Come, brother James! You cannot treat me as if I were a monster for ever. Do you not think it would be best to behave as if we were, in reality, brother and sister?”
He mumbled, “Yes, I suppose so,” with an utter lack of conviction.
Alvey looked at him sadly. She could see his beauty; she could still be charmed and bedazzled by it. But she could understand, also, that her love for James had been a kind of mirage, a condensation of her feelings about the place, the country, the family; what she had seen was an image of him, floating up in the air, dangling in radiance, out of touch with the earth. The real young man, down below, was quite another matter: good-natured enough, hard-working, intelligent, even brave, even idealistic, in his way, but perhaps rather shallow, rather slow-witted when it came to human relations. Not unlike his father, but with less experience. Not connected in any way with the picture of him she had carried in her head.
“There! Never mind it!” she said kindly. “I am very happy to see that you have learned to manage so well on your artificial leg—” and received from him a cross, embarrassed smile.
And I would so much have liked to talk to him on so many subjects, she thought sadly. About the dreadfulness and uselessness of war—on which I am sure that we have similar ideas; and about his medical ambitions—but what is the use? I am irrevocably classified for him as a scheming woman, a kind of sister, only worse; not at all the kind of female with whom he wishes to have any dealings.
After the funeral was over, Guy Fenway said to Alvey: “I have hardly had a chance to talk to you as yet. May we stroll on the terrace, or can we take a longer walk?”
“Isa would be glad to take you for a longer walk; she is longing to revisit her old haunts. For myself—I do have a number of household duties; but I should enjoy a walk on the terrace, for half an hour.”
“So,” he said, when they were walking side by side, looking out at the greening valley, “you ran away, and now you have been drawn back again. Was that really a sensible course of action?”
“To go, or to come back?”
“To come back.”
“Oh, but I had to! The children needed me—matters were all at sixes and sevens—and the old lady—and Sir Aydon—”
“But cannot Isa now take care of all that? She was born here, after all.”
“Her mind is always somewhere else; she is like her mother.”
“But don’t you see!” exclaimed Guy impatiently, “you have let yourself be caught in a trap! Louisa has escaped, but now you are a prisoner in her place—snared in the web of family life.”
“But I enjoy it.”
“You will never be able to do your own work. They will make a drudge of you.”
“But I did manage to work—”
“Marry me!” he interrupted, without listening to what she said. “Dear, dearest Alvey, marry me, and come with me to India. Escape from all this! As my wife, in Hyderabad, you will have such a different, most interesting, more fulfilled life—”
“Go to India?” She was utterly taken aback; she could not have been more startled if he had recommended that she marry the Duke of Wellington and remove herself to Patagonia. “Marry you, Guy?”
“I love you,” he said stiffly. “It may have escaped your notice—”
Looking back, she supposed she had noticed that he seemed to take pleasure in her company. But love? She said hastily—,
“Oh, I am sorry, Major Fenway, I am truly sorry. Indeed, I am—am deeply sensible of the honour you do me—but no, no, it is not to be thought of, it is quite out of the question. I am very sorry—very sorry indeed—you are a good, a worthy, an intelligent man—it is not that I do not appreciate what you have to offer—”
Go to India, when I have just regained all this?
“What in the world would I do in India?”
“As my wife—there would be many—But you can’t, you can’t refuse me! I love you!”
“I am afraid you must learn to do without me.” As I learned to manage without James, she thought. “I am probably not in the least what you imagine,” she added consolingly. “We none of us are, really, are we?”
“If it is a case of your writing, you could do that just as well in India. Many ladies keep journals, I understand. There would be ample leisure—After all, you will never get much done here, with everybody pressing for your attention all the time.”
“But I have. I did. I had a book published.”
“I did not hear of this? Nobody informed me.”
“Nobody knows. It came out under a nom de plume.”
“Indeed? It did? What was the title?” he asked in a disbelieving tone.
“Wicked Lord Love.”
“Oh come, my dear girl! You could not have written that. How could you possibly? I have heard of the book. I have even read it. What could you, situated as you are, know about such things?”
“I invented them.”
“You are not seriously intending
to tell me that you wrote Wicked Lord Love?”
“I am not intending to tell you. I have told you.”
“But that book has been—is—a staggering success! Everybody in Edinburgh has been reading it—everybody in the country!”
“Yes I know,” said Alvey cheerfully. “I believe it is going to make my fortune. They are going to do a dramatic representation at Covent Garden.”
Now he turned and looked at her, almost indignant with astonishment.
“You really wrote Wicked Lord Love?”
“Well, there is no need to show quite such surprise,” said Alvey, now beginning to feel a little affronted on her own account.
For she could see that in some way his feeling towards her had subtly changed; he was not altogether pleased at the news; it had somewhat upset him. Perhaps he was already beginning to feel relief that she had declined his proposal? For what kind of a wife would she have been to introduce into regimental headquarters?
“Well, I was never so astonished in my life,” he said at last in a quenched tone. “And I confess I do not at all see how you are to continue writing that kind of tale at Birkland Hall? Here, in this rural spot? in the depths of the country?”
Alvey hesitated, then said—,
“Nevertheless, here was where I wrote it.”
“What makes you wish to write such stuff?”
“Oh, how can I tell? It just comes out.”
She glanced at the watch on her waist-band. “I am so sorry. I fear that I must leave you now; a number of people are coming to dinner and I have to consult with Mrs Slaley. But I think you will find Isa in the drawing-room—”
“Never mind, thank you,” he said. “I have no wish to talk to Isa,” and he strode off across the stable-yard.
When the funeral guests were departed and the household reduced again to its normal quota, Isa said to Alvey, “I am sure you will be wishing to get back to your writing. I have not seen you retire to your room once, since I have been at home. You must be longing to get to work. Just tell me what to say to Mrs Slaley and I will say it.”
“Oh, thank you. How kind you are! But I have not yet resolved on what my next book is to be about. And I find it does not help to sit at my desk and chew my pen.”
“You did finish a book, then?”
“Yes, I completed one. I even had it published,” said Alvey, beginning to feel that this was a rather too familiar conversation, and might become even more so. “It was called Wicked Lord Love.”
Isa said kindly, “I am sure it was very good. I hardly ever read novels, as you know. I prefer biography and memoirs. And, of course, we have been travelling . . . Was it well received?”
“Yes.”
“So, now you will write another. What will it be about?”
I just told you—
Alvey said, “I am still waiting to decide.”
And here was her problem. For, despite Mr Seward’s encouragement, the hideous suspicion was beginning to overtake her that she would never in her life be able to produce a sequel to Wicked Lord Love. That extravagant creature had leapt fully accoutred from her imagination and he was, if not an only child, at least the only one of his kind; she began to realize that there would be no successor to him.
“If I do write another novel,” she said hesitantly, “it will, I think, be of a different kind. Perhaps the story of a family—a family such as this one.”
For how could she write about the pasteboard gallivantings of another Lord Love, when, after all these months, she had been feeling her way, like a person groping out of darkness into light, among real, solid forms? And a good half of them, she was now beginning to apprehend, she had never properly seen or understood—
It would be an entirely different kind of writing. One that she had never learned. It would mean starting all over again, from the very beginning.
“A family such as this?” Isa was puzzled. “But that would not be at all interesting. Our family is nothing out of the common. Just like any other.”
“I daresay, when you get to know them, that all families are different from one another.”
Isa sighed. “In my opinion, ours is decidedly dull . . . By the bye, did Major Fenway ever speak of me to you? He is such a clever, interesting man. And very kind, too, I think.” She looked up hopefully and went on, “I have sometimes wondered what he thought of me.” Did a tear sparkle in those short-sighted eyes? “I hope that he comes back to Birkland,” she said simply.
Alvey answered quickly, “No: I fear he did not speak of you. But that means nothing.”
She could not bear to quench the hope in these eyes. Not just yet. A. loves B., she thought. B. loves C. Oh, what sad geometry! She added, “You would hardly wish to travel to India, though, would you? He goes there in six months’ time.”
“No—o. That is true. I would not.” Isa sighed again. “Well—if you do not need me—I shall get my sketchbook; I will be up on Blinkbonny Height, if anyone should ask where I am—”
Alvey went in search of the children, and found them just about to set off on an adventure.
“Making more islands?”
“No, we have found a Wilderness. It is a piece of land that seems to belong to no one—”
“Shaped like a triangle—” eagerly put in Nish.
“In a bend of the Hungry Water, and it is all covered over with brambles and whin and sloe bushes, so we are turning it into a Maze. With tunnels. It will take weeks and weeks and weeks,” said Tot with satisfaction.
“Can I come too?”
“Not just yet. It would be too prickly for you. When it is all done we shall invite you to come and see it,” Nish said kindly, and then the pair dashed away, carrying packets of food put up for them by Mrs Slaley.
Alvey stood looking after them for a moment or two.
Presently she went up to her room and flung open the casement. Last night had brought the first autumn gale, with wind and pouring rain. The Hungry Water roared a new and louder welcome. And she could hear the subdued, conspiratorial chirpings of autumn birds—lapwing, stonechat, water ouzel, kestrel, curlew, and, up among the pines, a pheasant.
Now I have got to choose, she thought. I am going to be obliged to make a horrible choice: between my own imagination and the real world . . .
ebreak
Joan Aiken
Joan Aiken was born in Rye, Sussex in 1924, daughter of the American poet Conrad Aiken, and started writing herself at the age of five. Since the 1960s she wrote full time and published over 100 books. Best known for her children’s books such as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Midnight is a Place, she also wrote extensively for adults and published many contemporary and historical novels, including sequels to novels by Jane Austen. In 1968 she won the Guardian Children’s book prize for Whispering Mountain, followed by an Edgar Allan Poe award for Night Fall in 1972, and was awarded an MBE for her services to children’s literature in 1999. Joan Aiken died in 2004.
ebreak
Bello
hidden talent rediscovered
Bello is a digital-only imprint of Pan Macmillan,established to breathe new life into previously published, classic books.
At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of a good story, narrative and entertainment, and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.
We publish in ebook and print-on-demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.
www.panmacmillan.com/imprint-publishers/bello
ebreak
First published 1987 by Gollanz
This edition first published 2018 by Bello
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
w
ww.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-7811-6 EPUB
Copyright © Joan Aiken 1987
The right of Joan Aiken to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)without the prior written permission of the publisher.
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset by Ellipsis, Glasgow
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.
Joan Aiken, Deception
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends