Authors: Malcolm Macdonald
Nora beckoned Mary Coen up to the house. The girl, who had already got down from Arabella’s cab, gingerly climbed up the marble steps.
“Oh, your ladyship, isn’t that a grand house!” she said in awed tones.
“But you’ve seen it before,” Nora said.
The girl looked genuinely puzzled. “Indeed and I have not, ma’am.”
“But I thought you told Mrs. Thornton…never mind.”
She took the girl back to the drawing room and made her sit down. Mrs. Jarrett was there, waiting.
“Mrs. Jarrett,” Nora said, “have you ever seen this girl before?”
“I have not, my lady.”
“Have you ever given her money?”
“She has not!” Mary said hotly.
“Indeed not!” Mrs. Jarrett said simultaneously.
Nora looked at Mary in bewilderment. The girl neither looked nor behaved as if she knew her whole tissue of lies was falling apart.
“But you told Mrs. Thornton she did.”
The girl was speechless.
“You said you came to this house, and…”
“Not
this
house, ma’am. Sure I never was here in me life. It was Hamilton Place.”
“This
is
Hamilton Place,” both the other women said together.
Mary looked from one to the other and back. Then she stood up and went to the window, to look up and down the street. “No,” she said at last. “’Twas a big house right enough, but never so grand as this.” She looked at Mrs. Jarrett. “And ’twasn’t you, ma’am. I’m certain sure of that.”
“So am I!” Mrs. Jarrett said firmly.
“Thank you, Mrs. Jarrett,” Nora said. Something was very wrong here. Mary was either the most brazen liar—which was not credible—or something more was yet to come out. She wanted no witnesses to it.
She made Mary sit again and she gave her a lemonade, which the girl drank greedily. The jug had been on the table all the time but she had made no signs of wanting a drink. Nora realized she had forgotten what it was to live life at such a level that self-effacement of that kind was second nature. To herself and Arabella, life in that house of freak girls seemed the bottommost hell. But to Mary? No one had ever adored her for her scars; would it have been such hell? Then she remembered the terrible images Arabella had implanted in her mind and realized there was an infinite grading of hell, each of which would seem a paradise to those in the one next below.
“Well, Mary,” she said, “you are sure it was the master you saw. Not someone who happened to look like him?”
“Oh, ’twas the master, I’ll swear,” she said.
“And it
was
Hamilton Place—but not here?”
Mary nodded, unshakably. “Hamilton Cottage, Hamilton Place. Though, God, ’twas no cottage at all, but a grand house.”
“And the master was in this house—this Hamilton Cottage—for hours?”
“Sure I don’t know, ma’am. I only seen him coming away. Didn’t I think he was after collecting your rints? I thought you’d own all o’ them grand houses. And think of the rints you’d be gettin’!”
Nora could not help smiling at this notion that John might drive around from door to door, collecting rents. But where? Where were all these fine houses? “D’you remember the names of any other streets around there?” she asked.
The girl rolled her eves upward and closed them. “Circus Road…London Road…Grove End Road…Abbey Road…”
“Are you sure it was
London
Road? Not Loudoun Road?”
She opened her eyes in delight. “Yes, ma’am. That was it. Loudon. I didn’t know how ’twas said.”
“St. John’s Wood!” Nora said grimly.
“That was another!” Mary cried. “St. John’s Wood Road.”
“And what was the—this housekeeper like, Mary?” Nora asked. “Try to describe her.” She forced herself to speak calmly—almost languidly—so as not to arouse any anxiety in the girl. Had it been any other part of London, her suspicions would never have been alerted so quickly; but St. John’s Wood was always talked about with that knowing smile. Men winked at each other when they said that name. “St. John’s Wood—where even St.
Joans
would,” one wag said.
At first Mary’s description of the housekeeper called to mind no one in particular. Then, possibly because Arabella had mentioned her so recently, the picture of Charity…what-was-her-name…Charity something, came into her mind. She made Mary repeat the description and became even more certain of it. The “housekeeper” was Charity. She had never trusted that girl, had never been entirely happy with John’s account of his rescue of her—common little harlot, that’s all she was. There had always been a certain
je ne sais quoi
, a certain atmosphere between John and that creature.
And four years ago? Hamilton Cottage…that rang a bell at the back of her mind. She was sure the firm had once owned a house of that name. But four years ago. Too far away for any details to linger—just the impression of a rumpus of some kind. The sale had not gone smoothly.
She knew there would be no rest for her until she had nailed this suspicion down, one way or the other. After all, Charity could very easily be someone else’s kept woman out there; and John might have discovered her only recently and might be trying to persuade her to return to Arabella. That would be very like him.
Feeling heartened at the thought, she rose and rang for a footman. “Well, Mary,” she said, “I must busy myself now. Tomorrow we shall talk more about this and decide what is to be done for the best.”
She told the footman to have her carriage brought over from the mews opposite and then to see that Mary was found a bed for the night.
“You can help out in the scullery this evening,” she told the girl.
It was three o’clock before her carriage pulled into Nottingham Place. By then Nora had found so many innocuous reasons for John’s visit to Charity—if, indeed, it was she—that she had more than half a mind to turn around and go home. But she knew she would never sleep entirely easy until she had run this particular hare right into the ground, so she decided to go through with it all.
The office was so somnolent, she knew, even before she asked, that Flynn, the general manager, was away.
“He’s seeing Lord Stevenson in Westminster, your ladyship,” Oates, the chief clerk, told her. “At the India Office,” he said.
“Perhaps you can help me, Oates,” she said. “I simply wish to look back in the records of our property sales some time about five years ago.”
Oates nodded. “I think we still have them down here, ma’am. Five years is the borderline for going up to the attic.”
He searched for quite some time before he found the book in question. “Property not being our main line, as you might say, ma’am, it does tend to get pushed aside once it’s done. But I think this is the man for us.” He opened the ledger. “Which property was it?”
“Somewhere out near Maida Vale, I think. Hamilton Cottage.” She did not want to say St. John’s Wood. She watched carefully to see if Oates had any special reaction. Rumours and secrets had ways of flying around the enclosed community of an office. Oates behaved entirely normally, she was pleased to see.
“Oh, I remember Hamilton Cottage, ma’am. There was an argument about that; maybe you call it to mind. We had a contract to sell to someone…” He thumbed through the book, quickly finding the page. “Yes. A contract to sell to a Mr. Banks. But in the end we sold to a Mr. Nelson. A better price, too. I daresay that was it.”
Nora’s relief was indescribable. Nelson! It could be Charity’s husband—or protector. At all events it was sold. John had not just kept the house.
“What was your exact question, ma’am?” Oates asked.
“Oh, just an impertinent letter—I suppose from someone connected with this Banks person. I wanted to nail it at once,” she said. And then, to throw him even farther off the scent, she added, “I suppose it was freehold?”
He did not consult the book. “No, ma’am. A nine-nine-nine-year lease.”
She stood to go. He sprang to open the door. “Thank you, Mr. Oates. You have an excellent memory. How would we manage without you!”
Oates swelled visibly with pride and then, to show how complete his recall could be, he added, as she went down the stairs. “Oh, I remember that sale quite well now, ma’am. Just seeing the page has brought it back. I remember who the house was bought for, too.”
“For this Mr. Nelson, you mean? You met him?”
“No, no. That was her father. I never met him. But I know he bought it for her. It was all put in the deeds. He bought it for his daughter. I remember it because her name was Stevenson! Things like that, you know, they stick in your mind. Of course, that must have been her married name. I believe she was a widow.”
Nora wondered she could keep this smile on her face and the tremble out of her voice as she turned and said, “Really, Mr. Oates? What a prodigy of memory you are! You probably even remember her full name.”
“Indeed, ma’am. Mrs. Charity Stevenson. I remember thinking: There’s two words as don’t belong together—charity and Stevenson’s, you see!” Then, realizing the unflattering implication of his words, he began to stammer confused apologies.
Nora was doubly glad of this. It prevented the man from seeing her own distress, and it gave her something to do.
“On the contrary, Mr. Oates. You are quite right to say it. Every man who works for Stevenson’s has the satisfaction of knowing he earns every penny of his wage. There is certainly no charity here!” She turned to go again, but at the half-landing she added: “You’ve saved me a good day’s work with that excellent memory of yours. I would have discovered all this myself, of course, tomorrow. Please remember that—you saved me a day’s work.” If it ever came out, she did not want him thinking he had betrayed his master.
He mumbled that it was nothing and went back to the office, slightly puzzled at her choice of words. Moments later he had forgotten about it entirely.
***
All the way down to the India Office Nora seethed. It was not just that John had a mistress, and had kept her four years. Four years! For four years she had shared him. How many times had he come home with the stink of that little whore still on him? But it was not just that.
In a way, that was too great a hurt for her to comprehend all at once. The wound it dealt her, like all big wounds, left her immediately numb. Instead her mind buzzed furiously around the lesser details. That he should permit her to take the name Stevenson! How dare he—when he had been making the world sick with his endless talk of honour and seemly behaviour! While he was giving his name to that sow…that bitch…that little bit of vermin. How dare he!
And no doubt they had children by now. She almost howled when she thought of his marvellous body rutting away in that—that excrement. The body he had promised to her alone. And the children, too, would no doubt be called Stevenson. Suddenly she saw what a monster she had yoked her life to. If he had given her any other name but Stevenson, not all of Oates’s gift of total recall could have harmed him. But he had to put that brand on her. Nelson! She could have had that name instead.
Nelson…Hamilton! Oh—very funny! Flynn must be in on this. Someone in the office had to know. How they must have laughed. Men! Arabella was right. Until now, whenever Arabella had launched into her increasingly virulent diatribes against the perfidy of respectable pater-familiases and the whited sepulchres of middle-and upper-class manhood, Nora had smiled inside herself at the thought of John, who was so far above all that. Through all the vicissitudes of their marriage, she had never entertained the faintest suspicion of him in that way. Well, now who was the sentimental fool, and who the tough, clear-eyed woman!
Oh, yes; Arabella was right.
And the children would be Stevensons, in name as well as in fact. He was that greedy! Well, life was long. If it was ever in her power, she would destroy that woman and her brood. She cared not how. She would do it.
At the India Office Nora pencilled the one word
Urgent!
on her card and sent it in. Even before the pageboy had gone back in through the great portals, John appeared. He must have been standing near a window and have recognized her carriage as it came down Whitehall.
She was still too angry even to notice his anger, until he almost wrenched off the carriage door as he climbed inside.
“It is intolerable that you should come down here hounding me like this,” he barked. “How dare you!”
“You speak as if I did it every day,” she was stung into saying. “But you must know I…”
“And you must know—you must know your place, ma’am.” He spoke just as if she had remained silent. “When a man is on important…”
“Now listen to me!” she interrupted.
But he did not even pause in his sentence: “…business of government, why, the whole country would come to a halt if our wives pursued us down here.”
“I have only one thing to say…”
“And I will not listen to you. When you behave like this it is small wonder we have so unruly and rebellious a family. It is the quality of the parents’ behaviour that sets the tone of family life.”
“I’m glad you’ve brought that up, because…”
“No, damn you!” he roared. “I will not hear you. This is all part and parcel with your behaviour and the children’s behaviour to me at Quaker Farm. If you have something to say”—he descended from the carriage again—“you will raise it at the proper time. I am not at your beck and call.”
The carriage window was open but she was not going to brawl with him across a Whitehall pavement.
“Home!” she called to the coachman.
All the way back, along Whitehall, Regent Street, and Piccadilly, she fumed at John’s monstrous hypocrisy—“parents’ behaviour…tone of family life” indeed!
The carriage was turning back into Hamilton Place before she realized she had not once been even near to tears since Oates had dropped his grenade. She was self-observant enough—just—to realize that hers was a hard, cold anger. Did that mean she no longer loved John in the slightest degree, had not loved him for some time? Could such love die in an afternoon? Undoubtedly a hot, tearful anger, full of self-pity, would mean she still loved passionately. So did this cold, vindictive anger signal a death that had already taken place?