Miles and Flora Read online

  As the couple advanced towards where Geoffrey and Beth were sitting it was plain they had news to impart. Flora, walking steadily, smiled up dreamily at Justin. Justin smiled happily down at her. He helped her into a chair opposite the sofa on which Geoffrey and Beth sat. Standing with his hand on the back of her chair Justin said, in a low voice, ‘Flora has done me the honour of saying she will be my wife.’

  Geoffrey stood up and shook his hand. Beth exclaimed, ‘I am so happy – this is wonderful news,’ and bent forward to kiss Flora’s cheek. ‘I think I will fetch some water for Flora,’ Justin said. ‘For she almost fainted when she realised what manner of man she had committed herself to—’

  ‘No Justin. Do not leave me. I am quite well now,’ said Flora, and it was true that the colour was returning to her cheeks.

  Beth looked at her, though, in concern. ‘Nevertheless, Flora – perhaps the excitement – perhaps we should take you home.’

  ‘Will you insist on staying and dancing with all the other gentlemen who have booked your dances?’ Justin asked.

  ‘Oh, no. Certainly not,’ she responded.

  ‘Then let us go,’ he said and so the four of them left the house together and returned to Bedford Square.

  On their arrival at the house they met Henry Reeve, Geoffrey’s old friend, who had come on a visit. However, on hearing the news of the engagement and congratulating the young couple, he tactfully took himself off to Geoffrey’s study to read. Before leaving the party in the drawing room he turned to Geoffrey and told him, ‘No sight of the mysterious soldier Bradley told me about. He and a constable searched the house pretty thoroughly.’

  Not long after, Beth and Geoffrey had left the young couple alone to make their farewells. Justin and Flora, alone in the drawing room, clung together. ‘When?’ Justin asked. ‘When, Flora?’

  ‘There will be so much to do—’ Flora said.

  ‘I cannot wait,’ he said, kissing her.

  She broke away, smiling. ‘I fear you must. My aunt and your mama will be busy from now on.’

  He took her hand. ‘Would you elope with me, if I begged you?’

  ‘I would do anything you asked. But I think for our families’ sake you should not. Imagine what fun we can have now we’re engaged and free from surveillance.’

  He embraced her again, but she gave him a little push. ‘You must go now. When you come tomorrow we will be able to spend all day together.’

  He stepped back. ‘We’ll go out to Fosse Hall,’ he exclaimed. ‘You’ve never seen it. Not that we’ll live there, of course. We’ll have our own little house.’

  ‘How wonderful that will be.’

  ‘Unless I’m ordered into the field, to defend the nation from her enemies.’

  ‘Then I’ll follow you on campaign, through deserts and over mountains. I will never let you out of my sight,’ she responded.

  After Justin had gone Flora stood alone in the silent drawing room for a moment. She raised her eyes to the old portrait of the young couple, her parents. Then she picked up her skirts and ran upstairs, guiltily desiring on this night of nights to avoid discussing the wedding, the guests, the church, the flowers, the dresses, the hats. Just for a time she wanted to be alone, to retain the magic of this evening – the ball and the moments in the library with Justin as he spoke the words that would transform her.

  In order to leave the young couple alone, Geoffrey and Beth had joined Henry Reeve in the library. Reeve was a tall, thin man in his early forties with a long, reflective face, and brown hair, beginning to turn a little grey. He had very large, calm, brown eyes. He and Geoffrey had been friends for ten years.

  Henry Reeve was a man of unusual sensitivity. He noticed that, in spite of the pleasure Beth and Geoffrey expressed about the engagement and the obvious suitability of the match, their attitude was not unequivocally joyful. He put this down to a very natural ambivalence about losing a much-loved child. He knew they had brought Flora up since she was eight years old. Not wishing to intrude on any talk they might like to have, he sat with them for only a short while before standing up and saying, ‘You have much to discuss – I’ll be off now and see you in the morning. In fact, I believe I’ll move off to Jack Rawley’s just for the time I’m here. You’re likely to need the whole house to encompass this wedding.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Henry,’ Beth said. ‘You must stay. I shall be most upset if you leave us. Besides, think of the nuisance of getting to the Museum from Spitalfields, whereas here you’re just round the corner.’ Henry came to London occasionally to use the library at the British Museum and consult with one of the curators on the subject of some Bronze Age excavations he was conducting near his home.

  But, although both Bennetts urged him to stay, Henry’s instinct led him to think he would do better to go. Finally his host and hostess were formed to agree he would leave next day to stay with his old schoolfriend, who was also Flora’s godfather, at the parish house next to his church in the East End.

  ‘You won’t be any too comfortable there,’ warned Geoffrey. ‘Which will serve you right for leaving us.’

  ‘I live a life of complete bachelor ease and comfort at home. A little Christian poverty won’t hurt me,’ Henry said cheerfully.

  After he had left the room Geoffrey bit his lip. He felt unhappy Henry had chosen to leave. ‘I suppose a confirmed old bachelor like Henry would do a great deal to avoid a house with a wedding in the offing.

  Beth did not reply to this. She was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘I think we have to face facts, Geoffrey. Flora’s portion will be lamentably small by the standards of the Kilmoynes. There are disadvantages to marrying into wealthy families.’

  ‘Yes,’ Geoffrey agreed sombrely. ‘You’re thinking …?’

  ‘Sell Bly.’

  ‘Sell Bly,’ he repeated. ‘I wish it hadn’t come to this. I wish it hadn’t to happen.’

  ‘But it must be done.’

  ‘But is it wise?’ he asked.

  ‘It is the right time,’ she assured him. But she was not sure, he knew, and neither, of course, was he.

  Seven

  After Justin’s formal visit to Geoffrey on the morning after his proposal, the young couple went off gladly together in a carriage heading for the Kilomynes’ country house, Fosse Hall in Suffolk. It was too cold, protested Beth, but Justin overrode her. ‘We shall wrap up warmly and all will be well.’

  Over lunch, with Geoffrey and Henry, Beth expressed this doubt again. ‘Young couples will have these escapades,’ Geoffrey told her. ‘Don’t you remember our trip to Paris? Your father threatened to cut you off without a penny, your name would never be mentioned at home again.’

  Nevertheless, as the meal progressed, Henry Reeve found himself carrying the burden of the conversation. Once again he had the sensation that Flora’s engagement had brought the Bennetts less joy than he would have expected. He continued to make conversation, hoping they would pay him a visit in autumn, speaking of a recent visit to Verona. Geoffrey and Beth allowed all topics to fall to the ground. As he soldiered on, Henry began to find Geoffrey turning all the neutral subjects he raised, remorselessly, as if under compulsion, back to Flora and her coming marriage. Might there be a civil war in Ireland? Henry wondered. The Kilomynes, said Geoffrey, had large estates in Fermanagh. It was to be hoped no trouble would affect them. And women’s campaign for the vote? Geoffrey thanked heaven Flora took no interest in women’s suffrage – one of her school friends had recently been arrested. As Beth Bennett tried to move the conversation away from the wedding, Geoffrey, as if under hypnosis, kept taking it back. Yet he seemed not to wish to do so.

  Henry began to wish lunch was over. Both Bennetts seemed distracted. They had drunk their soup and eaten their fish. As Henry cut into his veal he wondered if some unwise investments of Geoffrey’s and his niece’s wedding had coincided unhappily. Or could Flora have had an earlier love affair which had gone too far? Yet Henry had known the family now for many yea
rs. He did not believe Geoffrey had been imprudent, any more than he believed Flora had had a love affair. He had known her from childhood and, had he been asked to set aside his fond feelings for her and make criticisms of her, he would certainly not have accused her of recklessness. He would, in fact, have said, if anything, she was a little passive, dreamy and other-worldly. She had been protected well by Beth and Geoffrey. She had never resisted that protection, Henry thought. It was an enormous relief that she was about to marry a straightforward young man who loved her and had no real need to make his way in the world. Flora would not thrive in a marriage where there were too many difficulties, practical or personal, to overcome. As for a furtive love affair, discovered too late by Beth and Geoffrey, and now something to conceal, it was, he considered, completely out of the question.

  They had now limped through soup, fish and breaded veal and it was with the arrival of apple pie and cheese that Henry received the first indication of what was troubling his host and hostess, though at the time he did not recognise it as a clue.

  He had embarked, in some desperation, on a monologue about his recent construction of a garden room, a large, semicircular glass conservatory to one side of his house, Lion House in Strand, Kent. He spoke of the incredulity of the local builder when he put his plan to him and his difficulties in siting the underground heating pipes. He knew the subject might not be very interesting to his host and hostess, about whom still hovered the air of vague anxiety he had been sensing since the previous evening, but nevertheless flowed on, observing the old rule of the diplomatic service, that silences must be filled. ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘the installation of the heating pipes and foundations involved some excavation. Imagine what we found when the workmen had painfully dug down three feet – a coin of 1814 and a little crudely carved wooden doll, very primitive, which I hoped was a doll and not some primitive cult object used in witchcraft. And a pair of sheep-shearing shears, some broken pottery and many, many bones. Of course, there had been a house on the site from the fourteenth century onwards and perhaps before that. Into the bones I did not enquire. We reburied them respectfully in the compost heap. I am interested in digging up the past, trying to work out from what they left behind how our ancestors lived and thought – but not while building a conservatory. In that context, old buried secrets are nothing but a worry and a nuisance.’ It was at this point in his flow of talk, perhaps when he spoke of buried secrets, that Henry observed with a pang the change in his host and hostess. Geoffrey was looking at him despondently. Opposite him Beth had become rigid. She sat with a fold of napkin between her fingers as if turned to stone.

  Henry broke off. He asked, ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘No, Henry,’ Geoffrey said in a flat tone. ‘No, perhaps I – we – are a little shaken about the coming departure of Flora.’

  Beth interrupted. ‘We have a little worry, perhaps. It’s nothing important. An old matter.’

  ‘Well, the past usually keeps its secrets,’ Henry said cheerfully. ‘There are very few like me, who will keep disturbing it. Which reminds me, I must go to the British Museum to see old Banks about my excavations on Shipston Down. Then I’ll hie back to Jack Rawley’s.’

  ‘I do wish you’d stay,’ Geoffrey said.

  ‘Nonsense. It would be wrong, like staying on in a house where the lady’s about to be confined. You have much to think about. This is a great moment for you and yet, as you say, you face the departure of Flora into her happy future. A great but troubling moment – yet imagine the envy of an old bachelor with no such troubles or affections in his life at all.’

  ‘It’s not too late for you,’ Beth told him. ‘I see I shall have to occupy my time when Flora has gone with finding you the right lady.’

  ‘I wish you luck, my dear,’ Geoffrey told his wife. ‘I happen to know many have tried – and all have failed.’

  And so the lunch ended, less gloomy than it had begun. Yet walking to his appointment at the British Museum, Henry Reeve was still puzzled by the atmosphere he had met at Bedford Square. ‘Things will settle, I expect,’ he said to himself. ‘Things generally do.’

  Eight

  At the same time, Flora and Justin were tucked up in front of a blazing fire in the village inn five miles from Fosse Hall. In a corner, sat two old men, drinking their pints. In front of Flora on a small table were cups, a teapot and a plate of bread and butter, the only form of refreshment other than beer that the landlady had been able to produce when they had descended from the coach, frozen.

  ‘Oh, I am mad,’ sighed Justin. ‘I must be, to have dragged you into a coach in dead of winter, rattled you through two counties just to look at an old house. At least we might have taken the train but, no, I must show you all the frost-stricken beauties of the landscape as we plodded along behind Dobbin. It will be my fault if you get a bad cold. Why did you not tell me sooner you were turning to ice?’

  ‘I was enjoying the ride, up there beside you as you drove,’ Flora explained. ‘And I was keenly anticipating seeing the house where you grew up. The cold is nothing. I still long to see Fosse Hall. And just think, this is the first time we have been able to be together for any length of time. That is best of all.’

  Justin felt he was sinking into her great topaz-coloured eyes. ‘We’re only fifteen minutes from Fosse now.’

  ‘We would be there already if we had not stopped.’

  ‘But you would have been a block of ice. I still reproach myself for not noticing sooner.’

  ‘I am warmer now, and quite ready to leave,’ declared Flora.

  ‘I dare not trust you, after your previous Spartan behaviour. Let us give it a little longer. Fosse will be chilly, with the family away and fires unlit for months. The heating system is deplorable. Father promises each year to put in a new one, but never does. You have eaten very little bread and butter.’

  ‘I seldom eat much.’

  ‘You must try. When we are married, I shall insist.’

  ‘Then I shall have to obey.’

  Later Flora stood outside on the terrace at Fosse Hall looking down over the long garden to the lake. Low mist hung over the frozen lawn and the surface of the lake. A few bent green-brown reeds stood frozen at the lakeside. Beyond, flat, misty ground stretched away. Overhead grey skies swirled. She shivered. Justin’s arm was round her waist suddenly. He swept her inside. The room was vast and the floor tiled, a whim of Justin’s grandfather, a lover of Italy. He had also erected a vast dome over the central part of what was actually an eighteenth-century room, with long windows and glass doors out on to the terrace beyond. Another impulse had caused him to install an enormous Italianate marble fireplace at one end of the room. On the garden side of the room, in niches, stood three marble statues, of Jupiter, Mercury and Venus, also imported from Italy. Coloured light fell over a long, ancient table which had been placed in the middle of the room.

  However, the fire in the vast grate had only just been lit and the room was still very cold. Shivering, Justin and Flora stood by the fire. ‘This room was a fantasy of grandfather’s,’ he explained. ‘How lucky we are not to have to live here. How lucky you’re marrying me, and not Thomas, who will inherit it. Shall we retreat? The fire in the small drawing room will have warmed the room a little now. We can have something brought to us there. I thought you should see first what we call Grandfather’s folly.’ He took her by the arm and drew her through a door into a hall. Flora looked back, ‘The room has charm,’ she said. ‘And the view is very nice from the terrace. What you could see through the mist,’ he added.

  He drew her into a smaller, cosier room, sat her down in a chair near the fire and drew up another, so that they were sitting almost knee to knee. He took her hands. ‘Oh, your little hands are still frozen. What a brute I am! What a fool to bring you! Will you ever trust me again?’

  ‘Justin,’ she reproached him, ‘don’t fuss. It’s a splendid house. I am so glad I came.’

  ‘And are you sorry not to
be the future chatelaine?’

  She shook her head. ‘Heavens, no. All I want is our own little house where we can be together. I would prefer to have no servants, if that were possible.’

  ‘Pretty dreamer – these little hands are not made for scrubbing floors and burning dinners.’

  He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. She smiled, then dropped his hands. Justin leaned back. ‘Well, now you have seen the dining room, library, for what it’s worth, and the madman’s hall, do you wish to mount the stairs and examine the upper storey?’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Flora said. ‘I think I would prefer to wait for warmer weather.’

  ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘In any case, we must leave fairly soon so that the light will not fail before we reach London.’ He rang the bell. The housekeeper appeared. ‘A glass of Madeira, if you please, and will you bring us something to eat?’ He turned to Flora, ‘A warming glass of wine and a sandwich and we’ll be ready to be off,’ he told her.

  They took glasses of wine through to the big drawing room. Flora, sipping, gazed from the window over the lawn down to the misty lake. ‘How lovely this must be with the sun on it,’ she said. ‘It is beautiful now, in a grand way, all greys and browns, with that great sky overhead.’

  Justin, at the table, studied the tall, slim figure in her long, brown, velvet coat. ‘I believe you are a creature of the sun, Flora,’ he said. ‘I long to see you as I saw you the first time. Do you remember?’

  ‘Of course I remember.’ She remembered the tall figure in white, bowing over her hand, saw his face turned up to hers then, smiling.

  His arms were round her now. His lips, flavoured with the sweet wine, on hers. Behind them she heard a door open, though he did not. But that door did not close again. She was aware that if a servant had opened the door and seen them embracing he would have quietly withdrawn, prepared to knock and enter again. She broke from him, turned and looked towards the door. The door stood wide open but there was no one there.