Valhalla, p.15
Valhalla, page 15
‘There is nothing quite like the love of a mother for a son,’ says Alix. ‘Nothing in this world. Poor May, you will discover that for yourself one day.’
XIX
Autumn, 1893
It is a room on the first floor. Small of course, but that does not matter. Once a bedroom for some diminutive guest, it no longer contains a bed or indeed much else. Old pictures are stacked against the wall. A roll of unwanted carpet. Georgie’s battered chest from his years at sea. It seems to be a place of little purpose now. But it has a pretty little chimney piece, a tolerable view across the pancake-flat fields and May Teck sees its purpose in an instant. Oh yes indeed. It is to be her boudoir, her sanctum sanctorum, the recreation of the white sitting room from home.
She must ask Georgie of course, but he scarcely bothers to look up from the King’s Lynn paper. Footmen are instructed to clear it out and maids to clean it up. A painter is called to sweep his brush over the faded woodwork. A carpenter puts up bookshelves, which shrink the room even more but she does not care about that. She has brought only her clothes and most necessary possessions to Norfolk, but now she telegraphs to Madame Bricka and summons her books, her favourite chair with the fan-shaped back, more framed photographs of her nearest and dearest, of Pen Ponds, of Florence and the Villa I Cedri. She summons too the portrait Harry Thaddeus Jones painted for her seventeenth birthday. The day on which, at first sight of it, she believes she became a woman. Hurry please, do hurry, she says in the telegram.
When everything arrives and whenever Georgie is out in the coverts, she spends hours sorting it all out. The new young servant, the nervous one, helps her. Pilgrim is a quiet girl, easy on the spirit and, like her mistress, far from home. Every day, May becomes more glad of her.
‘Oh Ma’am,’ says Pilgrim, as the portrait is hung above the fireplace.
‘Do you like it?’ asks May.
‘You look so lovely, Ma’am,’ the girl says. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Ma’am.’
‘Well perhaps someone will paint you one day.’
‘Me, Ma’am? Heavens, who’d want to paint the likes of me?’
‘Don’t be so certain. We can never know what life might bring us.’
‘Oh no Ma’am,’ the girl replies. ‘A photograph on the sands at Cromer is the best I can hope for.’
Georgie steers well clear of the comings and goings in the creation of the boudoir. Though it is only yards from their bedroom, he does not even cross the threshold till, when all is arranged, she invites him to visit.
‘So this is it,’ he says, coming no more than a single pace inside the room. ‘Though what you need it for defeats me, with these splendid rooms downstairs all newly done out for you.’
‘You have your study Georgie,’ she replies. ‘So it’s nice for me to have a little one of my own.’
‘Never heard of a woman wanting a study before,’ he says. ‘Except Grandmama of course, but that’s quite different.’
‘Is it? Why?’
Georgie’s eyes rake around the room. It is, she thinks, as if he is cataloguing every object, estimating its value and finding nothing of the slightest worth. His gaze lands on the portrait above the fireplace.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s me of course. When we lived in Italy. Didn’t you recognise me?’
‘Hardly. It’s just not you, is it? Not you at all.’
‘Well I was only seventeen,’ she says. ‘Don’t you like it?’
‘No,’ he says and turns on his heel.
Summer beaches are deserted. Church fetes are postponed. The visit to the cattle show in King’s Lynn is cancelled. In the pelting rain, they are trapped together inside the ship of pebbledash. But the slightest hole in the shroud of grey-black cumulus takes Georgie outside to shoot at something, anything at all, foolish enough to poke its head above the sodden bracken. How she despises the culture of the guns, will despise it till the day she dies, though she is wise enough not to let it show. Any attempt at discussion of the ethics of slaughtering God’s creatures would be greeted with incomprehension, derision and even concern about her mental state.
So May Teck says nothing and, as he marches off towards the woods, she retreats to her boudoir, takes a book from the shelf and settles into her fan chair in front of the fire. It doesn’t much matter if she has read it before, perhaps even dissected it with Madame Bricka. It is her way back into the thinking world. But on a day when her mind will not settle, when there has been some new little rub at the breakfast table, she might choose a book of pictures instead; her favourite an album of sketches of Florence which Mr Thaddy had once given her. Again, she finds herself in the Piazza della Repubblica, in the Boboli Gardens or riding down the avenues of the Cascine where the young bucks once threw flowers at her carriage. On the newly painted bookshelves of May Teck’s boudoir, every occupant is an old friend. Every one of them speaks to her, reminding her of who she is. And there she sits, until, from below, she hears the crunch of boots on gravel. The book is put back on the shelf. The past is sacrificed to the present. Georgie is back and she must go down. That is the way of it now.
On one of those mornings when the clouds part for a little, she goes to visit the cottage of a labourer whose child is mortally sick. It is Georgie’s idea. She must show herself to the people of the estate as soon as possible. No shirking, he says. How little he understands her. May Teck has never shirked in her life. Such visiting is as natural to her as the breath she takes. On the coat-tails of Mary Adelaide, there is no invalid she has not tried to comfort, no poverty or deprivation she has not witnessed.
She takes Pilgrim with her in the pony trap, bearing fruit and vegetables from the kitchen garden. It is hard to see the dying child in his cot. She senses that the poor mother would like her to touch the boy, but she cannot. That urge to retreat from the chaos of sickness invades her again, as it did when her father was afflicted in Italy and when Eddy was drowning from inside himself. It shames her, but she cannot overcome it. Instead she says the right things, promises whatever help might be needed, knowing the child is well beyond its reach. Going back in the pony trap, Pilgrim begins to weep.
‘Hush now, the poor child will soon be safe,’ May says.
‘I suppose so Ma’am but oh the waste of it Ma’am.’
The words of Aunt Queen come back to her, uttered as they stood together beside Eddy’s tomb.
‘It is the waste that breaks the heart,’ she had said.
Those words, May thinks, will never leave her.
By the time they get back to the glum little villa, the rain has started again and her head is splitting. She yearns to lie down for a little. But there is some small thing she wants from her boudoir. Only when she picks it up from a table does she notice what has happened. Surely the table is not quite where it stood this morning. Nor indeed is anything else. The escritoire no longer sits beneath the window to catch the best of the light. The Sheraton cabinet is against a different wall. The framed photographs of her family smile out from alien positions. Mr Thaddy’s portrait now rests in a corner, on the floor, its face turned to the wall as if not good enough for display; its place above the fireplace usurped by a tepid watercolour of Norwich Cathedral. Her beautiful fan chair is nowhere to be seen; instead a fat chintz object of remarkable mundanity now squats beside the hearth. It feels like a punch to the pit of her stomach. She can hardly breathe. She goes and splashes her face with ice cold water in the hope that it might calm her. The stratagem works, but does more than that. It also wipes the cobwebs from her eyes. She looks hard at herself in the mirror, slows her breathing and goes downstairs.
He is in his study, hunched over his stamp albums with a magnifying glass. When she enters, he does not look up.
‘Georgie, what has happened in my room?’
‘Your room?’ he replies.
‘Everything has been moved around. Some of my things have even vanished.’
‘Ah yes, Mama and the girls came over. When they heard you were out, they thought I might be lonely.’
He is still peering through the glass.
‘You must come and look at this Mauritian Red. It’s quite exquisite.’
‘My things, Georgie?’
‘What? Oh yes, Mama asked to see your new retreat. She thought it might be even nicer for you if she altered things just a little. So sweet of her, don’t you think? To go to the bother?’
‘Where is my little chair with the fan-shaped back? The chair I always sit in to read.’
‘I haven’t the faintest notion. No doubt, one of the footmen has put it somewhere out of the way. Does it matter?’
May turns on her heel, closing the door behind her. She summons both the footmen. The fan chair is in an outbuilding now, along with some of the old furniture removed to make way for the new stuff from Maples. She asks for it to be brought to her and does not move from her position in the hallway until it arrives. She stands stock still, as straight and tall as she has ever stood in her life. When the chair arrives, the wood is moist to the touch and a large watermark stains the upholstery. The roof of the outbuilding leaks a little, the footman explains, not meeting her eye. She orders it dried and cleaned and returned to its previous home before they undertake any other task.
At dinner, she is almost silent. She makes none of her usual efforts at conversation, declining to lob tennis balls in the hope of a decent return that never comes. He hardly seems to notice. Between mouthfuls, he mentions that one of the old dogs at the big house must be put down tomorrow. Dear old Brutus. Damn shame. And little Maudie has got a verruca on her foot and can hardly walk. Poor darling. May sees a piece of potato stuck in his beard. Normally she would gently tell him. Tonight she does not. The piece of potato can nest there till hell freezes over.
She goes to bed early. When he comes up later, she pretends to be asleep. Still he rolls himself up against her as usual. She does not move a muscle, she hardly even breathes.
‘May?’ he whispers.
She pretends not to hear, but the question comes again and then once more.
‘Georgie, I am tired.’
He rolls away onto his back. He sighs the sigh of a man sorely tried and put-upon. She can picture the redness in his face.
‘You took a vow did you not?’ he says.
‘And I will honour it,’ she replies. ‘But not tonight.’
‘I’d remind you that you have a duty to perform. I always thought you to be a dutiful girl. We all did. That is why you’re where you are now.’
‘I’ll not fail in my duty Georgie. But, you must excuse me, not tonight.’
There is another silence in the dark bedroom overlooking the pond. She hears the faint quacking of the wild duck in the reeds. The long sigh comes again.
‘Well I’m sorry, but I believe that I’m within my rights to insist.’
For a split second she resists, crosses her thighs and locks her arms across her breasts.
‘May!’
She takes a long breath, lets it out and makes her body limp as a broken puppet. In her mind, she travels to the garden by the Arno. Let him do as he wants with her. She will not be there. And anyway, it will all be over in less than three minutes. No more remarkable than the boiling of an egg.
When she wakes in the morning, he has already left the house. Gone fishing they tell her, with his chums from the stables. She breakfasts in blessed isolation. Though she tries to ignore it, there is some pain between her legs. Last night, in his irritation, he was not gentle.
She goes up to the boudoir. The seat of the fan chair is still damp, so perching on a stool, she writes letter after letter. To her mother and father, to her brothers, to Madame Bricka, to Mr Thaddy, to anyone she thinks might care to hear her voice. On the pages, she says nothing they would not want to hear, not even between the lines. Everything is fine. She is happy. How kind and considerate dear Georgie is. His stamp albums really are most interesting.
Then she puts her portrait back above the fireplace. As she stretches up to hang it on the hook, she feels the pain between her legs again. In the space of a moment, the pain shifts from there into her heart and soul, growing in intensity as it does so, from a mild discomfort to a consuming rage. But it is not like any rage she has felt before; those hot intemperate flames of anger inherited from her father, which fade as quickly as they flare. This is an ice-cold thing, as if the needle of a barometer inside her had lurched in another direction altogether.
She rings for Pilgrim. Fetch the footmen here at once. She orders the furniture restored to exactly the way it was. When that is done, she leads them all downstairs. In the sitting room, the dining room, the morning room, even in Georgie’s study, they are made to move every chair, sofa, table and cabinet to a position of her choice. Every picture, mirror, plant pot and what-not is reassessed for both beauty and practicality beneath her merciless eye. If it fails to please her, it is dispatched to the outbuilding with the leaky roof. She cares not a jot if it has only just left the factory of Mr Maple.
She can see that the footmen are nervous, hesitant even.
‘Are you quite sure Ma’am?’ one says.
‘Who is the mistress here?’ she replies.
The man’s eyes swivel to and fro, like a rabbit facing the barrel of a shotgun. He pauses a second too long.
‘If you’re not sure of that answer, perhaps you’d be better suited to employment elsewhere.’
When the work is done, May surveys each room then turns on her heel. She goes upstairs to the boudoir and slams the door with a noise that reaches down into the kitchens and up into the servants’ attics. She falls onto the fan chair, damp or not. Now the coldness that had come into her melts away. How she longs for an arm to wrap itself around her. The arm of her Mama, of Bricka, of anyone at all.
There is a knock at the door; soft as a whisper.
‘I brought you some tea, Ma’am,’ says Pilgrim. ‘And a bit of cake. There’s nothing like good strong tea is there?’
And so, when May Teck breaks apart and buries her head in her hands, it is the thin, white arm of a parlour maid from Cromer, scarcely more than a child, which encircles her shoulders and, without saying a single word, brings her comfort.
XX
Autumn, 1893
‘Jesus Christ!’
From downstairs, there is another slamming of another door. It is loud enough to shiver the petals of the roses atop her Sheraton cabinet. It shivers May Teck too and she steels herself for the marching feet along the landing. But they do not come. There are no more blasphemies. After the slam, there is silence in the house. The usual sounds of pots and pans crashing in the kitchen, of a footman whistling as he polishes in the boot room, even of the horses in the stables, are gone. The captain of the ship is in a temper and the crew creep around him on tiptoe.
She does not go down to luncheon. Pilgrim offers to serve something light in her room, perhaps just a little cold chicken. Do eat something, Ma’am, the girl entreats her, but she cannot. She lights one cigarette after another. All afternoon, she sits staring out at the drizzle, dozing a little or trying to read the latest book Madame Bricka has sent her. A new novel by Mr Gissing about two sisters made impecunious by the death of their father. One of them, wanting to find independence in a cold hard world, takes genteel but hateful employment, while the other, terrified of any such thing, flees into the security of marriage with an uncongenial man. May almost smiles. Oh dear, how unsubtle the clever-clogs Bricka can be sometimes. But try as she might, she cannot advance past the first few chapters.
Towards evening, the drizzle stops and she flings open the window. The weakening sun appears from beneath the skirts of the cumulus, spreading a tawny light across sodden grass of the garden and the flat fields beyond the fence. She inhales the smell of the earth as it dries out, the same smell she knows from her bedroom window at home. She closes her eyes and tries to pretend she is back there. When she opens them, she prays she will see the view straight down Queen’s Ride into the very heart of the park and glimpse the sheath of Pen Ponds through the trees. She will see her brothers striding off with their fishing rods. She will see the familiar pathways through the ferns and the bracken, on which she could find her way even on a moonless night.
A knock on the door compels her to open her eyes to her new reality. A note is delivered on a silver salver.
‘I shall expect you at dinner,’ it says.
And so she bathes and changes and goes down the narrow staircase. To her surprise, the dining room is exactly as she left it. If she catches his eye, he looks away. They eat without a single word until the arrival of the peaches and cream. Good simple food, that’s what he likes. Nothing fancy. Like he and Eddy used to get on the ship that took them round the world for three whole years. To this day, he likes to make his mother and sisters laugh by tapping biscuits against the table to check for weevils. How odd, May thinks, that his travels seem to have taught him nothing; left him so incurious about the wider world, perfectly happy with the narrowest of horizons.
‘They’ve all gone now,’ he says at last, toying with the peaches. ‘Back to London. The big house is shut up again.’
‘I see,’ she says.
‘Mama asked to say goodbye to you. I told her you were indisposed.’
She does not reply. When the meal is over she goes up to bed. She waits in dread for the rolling towards her, the breath on her face, the tugging at her nightgown. But it does not come. They lie together side by side, flat on their backs, rigid as two effigies on a tomb. Is that what their marriage is to be now, she wonders? Dead before it ever came alive? In the night, there is no snoring so she can tell he is awake. Their hands lie on top of the quilt inches apart but do not touch.
Breakfast is as silent as dinner had been, but agitation hangs in the air like dust in a shard of sunshine. When she flicks a glance at him, he is gnawing on his kippers, stripping the last of the flesh from the bone. He slurps at his tea like a man half dead from thirst. Though it never comes to rest on her, his gaze roves around the room, from floor to ceiling, corner to corner as if he has heard a rat behind the wainscoting.
