Men On White Horses Read online

  ‘When’s that, when’s that?’ She felt the cold suddenly, thinking: he’s going. And remembering too: when he comes again he’ll have her with him.

  ‘The spring. We are to be married at Easter. We shall probably come over as part of the honeymoon.’ He tightened his arm round her: ‘I’m hoping, Edwina, it won’t be too cold. Adelina isn’t strong. That has been one of the worries – if she should be where it’s very damp and chill.’

  ‘What might happen to her?’

  ‘If she gets really unwell then – she might be taken from us.’

  ‘Taken where? Who by?’

  ‘She might die.’ He pursed his lips, kissed her forehead. He smelt so beautiful. ‘She might go to Heaven, Edwina.’

  ‘Was he riding one of her horses?’ The teacups rattled. Nurse’s sister was there yet again.

  ‘Very smart he looked, I’m sure, she was astride of course. The Master – if looks could kill. She’s very defiant about it. His influence, I should think.’

  ‘They’ll ride like that in foreign parts…’

  ‘… Something to do with her life before she married. She must have learnt odd ways.’

  ‘Very odd, I should say. But then, she and Mr Illingworth – there’s an unlikely pair to be pulling a carriage. You must wonder. I should. Indeed I should.’

  ‘Not at all. I always make it my business to find out – things. For that marriage, you can blame the old one. The old Mrs I. Always bothered about abroad she was. Sending her son off every few years. That’s what I heard. But not Miss Josephine – oh no. She’s only a girl of course.’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  ‘One of those trips it was. Germany, I think, or was it Switzerland – one of those continental places. He’s at this hotel, you see, and who’s there but her and that brother. And not able to pay their bill –’

  ‘Your voice, Ada. You’d best mind –’

  ‘Of course the Master’s there and sees it all. The next thing is – he pays up. And Bob’s your uncle. No one as soft as men. In no time at all it’s wedding bells… I don’t doubt she was very charming – she’s all charm when she wants, you know. And pretty too, I’ll give you that. There’d be no resisting her, I’m sure. And him, that brother, it’ll be the same. Make friends as easy as – Not with me he wouldn’t though. “Oh Nurse, is it all right if I come up and visit little Weenie?” That foreign charm. Let him try, I say –’

  Rattle, rattle went the teacups.

  ‘He’ll not bother you, Ada. I shouldn’t fear –’

  ‘Indeed. They say he’s met up with a titled lady. Cook said… You’d be surprised what I overhear.’

  ‘Still, it’s a funny sight, Ada, a woman riding like that! Didn’t she write to the newspaper about it?’

  ‘She did. About how natural it is. Natural indeed. If God had meant ladies to open their legs like that…’

  There were six of them at the dancing class, not counting Madame Lambert Who taught them and Miss Bowser who played the piano. The girls were: Clare, Muriel, Violet and Edwina, and the boys: Ned and Laurence. Violet was dark like Edwina but very beautiful with it. Her smooth hair, her motionless face reminded Edwina of nothing so much as wax fruit – Muriel was her younger sister. Clare, the daughter of the family where Edwina went for Mass, was dark also, but sallow too and a little sullen. Her lip curled back when she talked or smiled. Ned she loved to watch. He was quicksilver. Pointed too: head, nose, hands and above all feet. His dancing shoes even, seemed more pointed than anyone else’s. His eyes darted. His hands flew about. But Laurence was serious, solemn almost. His dark hair lay flat and polished, his face too was polished like wood. He always did exactly what Madame Lambert said – yet it came out wrong.

  Madame Lambert had been a dancer herself once, a ballet dancer. But that had been nearly forty years ago in eighteenseventy something. The dancing they learned was a mixture. There were steps which really were ballet, there were floating sorts of dances, there were attempts to be fairies. Finally, there were the ‘real’ dances: the waltzes, the polkas, the mazurkas. Then they took partners, but because they were uneven, two girls always had to dance together.

  ‘One two three, one two three,’ went Madame. The sleeves of her mauve dress were very loose and the arms which peeped from them were all crepey, somehow matching the material. She seemed to have difficulty rising on her toes. It was hard to imagine her as the light-footed ballerina, drawings and photographs of whom were all round the walls (Examining these was always encouraged: ‘If you want an example of pas de deux, see then how I am poised in this picture…’).

  Ned was her favourite. He could move so quickly and easily. But he laughed at her. They all knew that. He would pull faces, shake his head, flap his ears while her back was turned. Laurence was her unfavourite. He didn’t seem to mind being shouted at. He took everything absolutely calmly. When corrected, told to place his foot to the left (’Your left, Laurence,’) he did so with goodwill. His face wore an expression of perfect peace. It was all beyond him. It made no matter what he did.

  Sometimes he would talk to Edwina, in the odd moments. ‘My father is a composer,’ he said today. ‘He writes music. He sits in a room all alone. Sometimes he goes to concerts where they’re playing what he’s written.’

  She listened in wonder. That anyone should do that all day, every day of their life.

  ‘Sometimes he says, “I’m very fatigued. I worked on the Fantasia until three in the morning.” ’

  She marvelled.

  She determined that today she would have him as a partner. As Madame began pairing them off, she said: ‘I dance with Laurence this time. You said so last week –’

  Madame had said nothing of the kind, but obviously she didn’t like it suggested she’d forgotten, so: ‘Yes, yes of course. Edwina then with Laurence.’ The music started up. Edwina envied Miss Bowser, hunched, one shoulder higher than the other, dark hair screwed in an unsuccessful knot, banging out the notes…

  ‘Oh see me dance the polka!’ Laurence was very bad. ‘Oh see me having such fun!’ He was red with effort, but still unmoved. When it was over, he said: ‘My mamma doesn’t wear corsets.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Edwina asked, shocked.

  ‘You can tell of course. Her frocks are called Liberty Gowns, because they give you liberty. My sisters are at art school, one is in Paris. I am going to be a diplomat. I shall arrange history.’

  ‘Tra, lala, lalala la…’ ‘In the Shadows’ by Herman Finck, thumped by Miss Bowser.

  ‘Laurence Wethered. You are not attending…’

  ‘How long’s he staying?’

  ‘Only three more days. Then it’s back to the land of hokey-pokey. Little Miss-you-know-who will be quite impossible.’

  Click of knitting needles. ‘Have you tried the fizzy tablets? It says they melt down the walls of all the little fat cells, gets rid of the oil in them…’

  ‘Remarkable… I hear that little one of Arthur Pickersgill’s gone home. They’ve too many.’

  ‘Too many. Have you got the Ally Sloper? We might win, I dare say. Read it out – I don’t have my spectacles –’

  ‘“A maid from the Emerald Isle

  Met a Yankee who’d gathered his pile

  Determined to wed him

  She carefully led him… ”

  ‘You can choose from “aisle, beguile, crocodile, fertile, Gentile… ” ’

  ‘What about “up the aisle”; that fits, doesn’t it?’

  She hated the monkey-puzzle tree. Dark and spiky, its shape was evil. Today in the afternoon breeze its ugly branches waved slightly. She thought it was something to do with death, and moved on. Her feet dragged through a pile of fallen leaves. ‘Can I go out? I want to go out –’ But now she was here she didn’t know what to do with herself.

  It was cold and crisp, the sun suddenly glowing through the bare branches in the park. The coloured songbirds, the ones Uncle Frederick had given them, darted gaudily from branch to branch in th
eir house near the peacocks. She walked on, farther than she was meant to go: past even the cottage where the head gardener Mr Ramsden lived with his brown bowler and his chestnut beard and his fierce temper. Through a broken gateway to the old overgrown garden no one ever visited. Elderberries, a thistle tree, thick nettles. Neglected, dank.

  Death, dying, going home. The leaves beneath her feet, some crinkly red, some sodden, were dead. She had had a sister who’d died, born before her. The grave was visited. What would I feel like if Cora died, what would I feel like?

  Suddenly, from the long damp undergrowth, bounding out, came the small tight body of Spot, Arthur’s dog. She recognized him from the time Arthur had brought him to the stables. Rolling about in the hay, lying quiet when told. Now he rushed up to her, squirming. He seemed to be three small rolls, his head foxy and pointed. Emily loved him, used to dress him in an old sunbonnet, Arthur said.

  Emily was dead. She played with Spot a little, throwing him a stick, pretending a tug of war. Then he wanted her arms. He nestled, one paw hanging over. Floppy, unbelievably heavy. I’ll never manage, she thought, determining there and then to take him home. She was afraid for him: the carts going by, a small dog caught under the wheels – finished.

  No one was about when she went through the Hall gates. The main street was quiet, almost deserted. Arthur lived in a small lane, the end cottage, in the shadow of the Norman church with its steps up to the railed pavement.

  One of the children opened the door to her. A dark boy in dirty jersey and torn woollen knickerbockers. He looked surprised.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, screwing up his eyes, ‘that Spot?’ He called inside: ‘It’s Miss Edwina, Mam, brought back Spot –’ Massed behind him in the small room was child upon child, pairs and pairs of eyes behind great manes of hair, watching her. She could smell cooking, something with oatmeal.

  As she stepped inside the boy clouted Spot suddenly across the ears: ‘That’s for running off.’ Just then Mrs Arthur came in. Edwina had seen her before: Christmas, the annual cricket match, a party once in the grounds of the Hall. Now, thumping down the tiny stairs, red in the face, wisps of hair stuck to her anxious face, she looked quite different. ‘Sit you down, miss.’ She shook a dirty flat cushion off a chair. A small boy with no shoes on hit out suddenly at his sister who began to yell. The big boy cuffed them both. Edwina had never seen anything so quick, so efficient. Two strokes to one, two to the other. ‘Give over,’ he said.

  ‘You give over,’ Mrs Arthur said, in a flat voice. ‘Cock of t’midden – He plays father,’ she said to Edwina. ‘Always playing Dad. What will ye take, summat to drink?’

  Edwina said primly, sitting upright on the uncomfortable chair, one of its legs shorter than the others so that it fell forward continually: ‘I’ve hardly come any way, thank you. I don’t need anything.’ The younger children were all staring at her, looking wonderingly at her fitted coat, tammy, bright red scarf, shiny black buttoned boots. One little girl had on broken-down boots too big for her, and laces in only one.

  Mrs Arthur asked cautiously: ‘Should you be out – baht your nurse?’

  Edwina said, ‘I’m allowed to go where I please this afternoon. Miss Norris is taken ill.’

  A stack of oatcakes stood drying on a stool in front of the range. Others were piled in a scuttle. It was these she had smelled. She felt cold and empty and awkward.

  ‘I’m sorry about – Emily.’

  ‘Aye,’ Mrs Arthur said. She wiped her hands on her apron. One of the children said, in a squeaky voice: ‘She wanted a orange. Afore she went she asked for a orange.’

  ‘When had she seen one?’ Edwina asked, then answered herself: They were given out over Christmas. I remember. We gave them to everyone, to families –’ Her voice sounded wrong, it came out tight and loud.

  ‘D’ye want to see her?’ Mrs Arthur asked dully, and when Edwina nodded: ‘I’ll take ye then.’

  None of the children followed them up. Emily didn’t look as Edwina had imagined. All that coughing. She’d pictured a red face puckered up, damp hair. Here was a little wax doll. Tiny. Lovely. She looked at her for a long time. Mrs Arthur had her hands clasped together. Her eyelids were pink and puffy and the skin all round her nose dry and sore. Edwina turned. It was then that the idea came to her.

  Mrs Arthur said: ‘She looks bonny, eh?’

  Edwina nodded. Then she said, as if plunging into cold water: ‘Would you like Cora?’

  Mrs Arthur frowned.

  Edwina said, ‘I mean – you’ve lost Emily. Would you like to have Cora?’

  ‘I don’t – I mun go down.’ She looked confused, puzzled.

  But it was so clear to Edwina. ‘We could give you Cora. She’s the same age. I’m sure if I asked Mother. She’s too small to bother where she lives…’ Her voice trailed away. Something was muddled and wrong, wicked wrong.

  Mrs Arthur’s face crumpled, frighteningly – almost as if it were paper that Edwina had screwed up in her fist.

  ‘Who on them sent you?’

  ‘No one,’ Edwina said. ‘No one. I just thought…’ the words faded in her dry mouth.

  ‘Can’t folk be left then? Can’t they be left in their grief, but ye’ve to come saying things like that?’ She had laid her head down on to her arm.

  ‘I’m going,’ Edwina said, ‘I’ll go. I’m sorry –’ She crashed down the stairs. The children were sitting in a small circle. ‘What’s up?’ called the boy, coming towards her. But she’d already got her hand on the latch.

  She ran all the way. She was lucky and didn’t see anyone. She’d timed it well too: all was quiet in the nursery. Nurse was mixing paste for Cora’s scraps. German scraps: Hansel and Gretel and the house in the forest; the sugar house. Edwina couldn’t look at them.

  ‘Lost your tongue?’ Nurse said after a while. ‘Left it with the peacocks again?’

  Uncle Frederick’s last day. It was to have been wonderful – sad and happy at once, because although there was the sorrow of his going there was also to be an outing. Just her, and Mother and Uncle Frederick. They were to go into York, and have luncheon there. Uncle Frederick was to buy her a present…

  But she woke with a feeling of doom and dread, the taste of yesterday afternoon still in her mouth. She looked at her best clothes laid out. The little red cloak, her muff, the cream cashmere dress with the wool lace neck and cuffs.

  Katy, one of the housemaids, came up after breakfast just when she was about to be sent to the lavatory. ‘Miss Edwina – she’s to go downstairs immediately?

  Nurse said: ‘She’s to open her bowels first.’ Edwina paid no attention. She knew anyway that if she sat there half an hour nothing would happen. Inside she had turned to stone.

  Everyone was in the drawing-room. Standing. Her father glanced at his watch just as she came in. He looked grave and sad.

  ‘Ah, Edwina!’ he said, almost as if surprised to see her, as if he’d just recognized her. ‘Ah, Edwina!’ Uncle Frederick, darling Uncle, didn’t even look at her. Aunt Josephine stood grim, silent, her mouth pulled together.

  Father said: ‘You know why we’ve sent for you?’ She shook her head.

  ‘Come along, Edwina,’ Mother said sharply.

  ‘No,’ she said stoutly. ‘No, I don’t.’ Her voice wavered.

  Father said: ‘Did you go to Arthur Pickersgill’s cottage yesterday?’

  ‘Yes,’ Edwina admitted.

  ‘What possessed you, what came over you? I cannot believe that a child such as you – It’s preposterous –’

  ‘We are all ashamed,’ Mother said. ‘Frederick was quite horrified.’ Aunt Josephine could be seen nodding. Uncle Frederick’s face was still turned away. ‘Your own sister. And you distressed Mrs Pickersgill terribly. Arthur told Cook. She saw fit to tell us. I could not believe my ears.’ Aunt Josephine nodded again in grim agreement. Edwina thought that perhaps Uncle Frederick looked far away because he was trying hard not to come in and take her side. Certainly he would und
erstand that she meant it for the best. But he was thinking perhaps already of the sun in Italy, of the palaces and the white marble, of his voyage across the sea ?

  ‘… to say nothing of the risks of contracting whooping – cough. Naturally there will be no treat today. Your mother and uncle have decided not to go out either – You have spoilt the day for them as well as for yourself. You will stay in the nursery all day, without talking. Bread and milk only to eat. That may perhaps calm you down and get rid of some of the ideas you seem to have been possessed by…’

  She said, ‘I meant it nicely. I meant –’ But it sounded hopeless. The words faded away. She had indeed been possessed. Otherwise how could she, how could she have offered them anything so purely awful as Cora?

  A day so terrible, that could have been so happy. A wind started up, damp blowy rain against the high nursery windows. She didn’t want the bread and milk. Couldn’t have eaten anything. She sat with her hands on her lap, just staring in front of her. Nurse, who knew it all, treated her like a leper. She said: ‘Go and sit on your throne again. The poisons will go back up if you’re costive.’ With her next breath she muttered, ‘Your own sister – ’ She rushed over to hug Cora. ‘Nurse’s little darling, you’ll never leave us, will you? Will you?’

  The weather had grown really cold. It would soon be Christmas. She was making Uncle Frederick the most beautiful Christmas card that had ever been seen – drawing and painting, cutting out and sticking, pasting down fluffy wool. It was a snow scene but she drew the sea on as well.

  Mother had again that pinched, slightly yellow look. Aunt Josephine was very solicitous, fussing about her sitting down. ‘It’s never been so bad,’ Edwina heard Mother say: ‘Beef tea only this time. And peaches, I crave peaches.’ She complained of the smell of the camellias, the tuberoses. ‘So sickly,’ she said fretfully. The hunting season was six weeks old now. She said wistfully: ‘If I were only on French Carotte now, setting out – how well I should feel. I know it would do me good…’

  Philip came home. He and Edwina had little to say to each other. There was a diabolo craze at his school. He practised throw and catch all day, frequently and angrily disentangling the cord from the spool. Miss Norris complained because he came into the schoolroom to show off. A champion, Edwina learnt, could manage eighty-five catches a minute.