Paddington green, p.17
Paddington Green, page 17
‘Oh, we will not be too full!’ Freddy said airily, and bit hugely into his toast. ‘For this is only a little breakfast, you see! We shall be quite ready for the usual one, shall we not, Phoebe?’ And Phoebe nodded vigorously, unable to speak for her full mouth.
It was while she was eating her own more frugal breakfast that the letter arrived from Gideon.
‘My dear Mrs Caspar,’ she read, and raised her eyebrows momentarily at the formality of it. ‘Will you be free to take the air with me this afternoon, in Kensington Gardens? On such a balmy day, I have no doubt, Master Frederick and Miss Phoebe will find some occupation to employ them there, and there are matters I would wish to discuss with you which may well be brought into review on the pleasantness of the Broad Walk. Please to tell my messenger that I may attend you at Paddington Green shortly after one o’clock? I hope indeed you will feel able to do so, and oblige Yr most Sincere Friend, Gideon Henriques.’
She sat for a long moment staring out at her little garden where the daffodils were starring the grass under the faintly green branches of the little tree that grew there, finding it difficult to order her thoughts. She had been feeling like that for the past three days, ever since her own absurd loss of control—as she now saw it—and Gideon’s startling reaction to it.
She had managed to dismiss his declaration of affection at the time with a light remark and had got to her feet with what dignity she could muster and asked his pardon for her foolishness, then begging him to excuse her; and he had stood and looked at her in silence for a moment and then nodded, and turned and picked up his heavy coat and tall glossy hat, and bowing with that faintly formal air that he sometimes adopted brushed her hand with his lips and made his adieux She herself had taken half an hour to collect herself, and then returned with apparent serenity to her day’s work, soothing Henry, who was still bewildered and indeed doubly confused by his employer’s extraordinary behaviour, and giving him leave to take samples and the tariff to his hoped-for new customer. There would be time to be worried about what to do if an order were offered; until then, when it would be necessary, she had vowed, she would not concern herself with the problem of how she should behave in the matter.
And she had told herself, too, that she would not concern herself further with the matter of Gideon’s extraordinary declaration. He is very young, she had adjured her own mind. Too young to realize that his emotion is not love, as he believes it to be, but mere pity excited in his sensitive heart by the sight of a weeping widow. It is no more than that. It cannot be more than that.
But even as the sensible part of herself said this, several times (and she recognized the significance of the fact that she had to keep repeating it) her emotions were not so sensible, but played quite outrageous tricks on her; as for example making her chest suddenly constrict at the sight of a tall and slight man striding along the Harrow Road and bearing a fleeting resemblance to Gideon’s back view, or making her go off into a brown study, staring out with unseeing glazed eyes at the factory through her office door instead of concentrating on her work.
It has indeed been a comfort to her that Miss Miller, the new governess and secretary, had taken up her residence at Paddington Green. When Abby returned there in the evening she had to make an effort to converse with the girl, for she was shy and quiet, and to teach her the new tasks to do with the manufactory for which she would be responsible; and that effectively controlled thoughts of more personal matters. And when she went to bed she was much too weary to lie and ponder for long, and slept as quickly as was her wont; but she did dream a little, and somewhat disturbed dreams sonie of them had been.
Now this letter; for a moment she wanted very much to send the messenger away with some Banbury tale of having the headache or being otherwise indisposed; and then she shook herself in some irritation. It was quite absurd to react so to Gideon, her good friend and business associate, the man she had known since his gawky boyhood, who was so much her junior! And anyway, her practical mind whispered, you must see him on Wednesday at the manufactory, so what difference to ride in the park with him today, in such lovely weather?
So she sent the messenger back to Lombard Street with her acceptance of the invitation and told Miss Miller and the children of the projected jaunt, much to the latter’s delight, and then went to Church as usual, neat and quiet and proper as befitted the widowed mother of a hopeful young son, and worked very hard at keeping her mind on Collects and Lessons and Sermon instead of the pleasure that she would undoubtedly find in the afternoon sunshine of Kensington Gardens. And if she were to find embarrassment as well as pleasure, well, that too was something she would worry about when it happened.
‘I know no other way to convince you!’ Jonah said, and cut savagely into the beef on his plate. Sunday should be an agreeable day, free as it was from the pressures of work in the supper rooms, the day when they could be as other families and share a noonday luncheon at a reasonable time, instead of snatching a hasty meal in the middle of the day’s bustle. But today, despite the sudden improvement in the weather, was proving far from enjoyable for Jonah. Not only was he missing Phoebe’s company with much more keenness than even he had expected—almost to the point of regretting his careful plan, a selfish thought he did all he could to banish—but also because of Celia.
For a full week she had hardly spoken to him at all, addressing him only in monosyllables when she had to, and quite clearly deliberately avoiding any possibility of prolonged conversation between them. She had gone about the work of the establishment with a relentless energy that had left the servants even more than usually exhausted, and had dealt with a savage intensity with all that needed doing. The kitchens had been scrubbed and burnished to a pitch of cleanliness that was remarkable, and the supper room and his little stage gleamed with beeswax polish and newly buffed brass and well brushed velvet.
At the end of each day she had somehow contrived to be in bed and asleep before he came to their room, or busied herself about the house for so long after he had gone to bed that despite his best efforts to remain alert he was fast asleep when she came to slip into bed beside him.
He had felt her brooding presence, though, all the time, and sometimes seemed to feel her eyes upon him, dark with suspicion and deeply troubled. But when he turned his head to look at her across the supper rooms or over the dining table she would be sitting with her eyes hooded, ostensibly quite unaware of him.
Until this morning, when she had burst out with her extraordinary attack, and he had been quite stunned with it; and then, when he had realized just what it was she was saying, he had been fool enough to laugh.
‘To Lilith? You thought I had taken her there? Oh, really, Celia, that is the outside of enough! As if—’
‘As if what?’ she had flared at him, sitting up against her pillows with her bedgown clutched about her shoulders—for she had greeted him with her fury as soon as he had opened his eyes to the glitter of the morning sun on the blinds. ‘As if you would think of such a thing? Don’t tell me you have not wanted to go to her, these many, many times! Don’t tell me you have not yearned for her and lusted for her these many many years! Do you think I am a fool? She told me—oh, she told me, and that hellborn bitch knew what she was saying—she told me you would always want her, and she was right, for have you not taken Phoebe to her, have you not chosen to let her suffer as I did at her wicked cruel—’
It had gone on and on, as he had sat at the edge of their bed staring at her in sleep-dazed amazement as the words came tumbling out of that pale face above the unmoving and rigid body sitting there absurdly framed by the brass rails at the head of the bed, her arms folded with fierce self-protectiveness across her breasts, and her eyes almost black with the fires of her rage and resentment and fear.
He had spent a good hour, when at last she had ceased her railing, in trying to convince her that it was to his sister he had taken Phoebe, and that it was Abby and not Lilith who was providing this help to their daughter, although prudently he did not mention money or that Abby had been in the habit of presenting him with extra funds for some time. Quite apart from his own shame at the situation, he had no wish to add fuel to the flames of her unreasonable rages.
At last he had managed to soothe her and when, later in the morning while she was supervising the preparation of the luncheon in the kitchen, he had time to himself, he took Oliver for a walk, grateful for the opportunity to restore his own peace of mind.
These moods and rages of hers were becoming more alarming, he told himself, as they walked along King Street towards Bedford Street in the warm sunshine, passing the little flatfronted houses of their neighbours as they made for the peace of the railed churchyard of St Paul’s, which lay in the corner between Bedford Street and Henrietta Street, boxed in with tall houses which frowned down on the little green patch of headstones and grass that lay at their feet. She had ever had a hot temper—and he remembered with a twist of his mouth the way she had once turned on him in her mother’s drawing room one snowy afternoon, long ago, believing him then to be her mother’s paramour and attacking him with a huge venom—but it was, surely, getting worse?
There were times when she shrieked at the servants in such an access of fury that it seemed her eyes would burst out of her head; it was small wonder that they were all so frightened of her—and worked so well. Anybody would do all they could to escape the risk of a lashing from her tongue; and sometimes she would hit out physically too, laying about the girls’ scrawny backs with whatever came to hand, be it broomstick or pot lid. It was only because work in the neighbouring rookeries of Seven Dials, Clare Market and the Bermudas was so hard to come by that the poor wretches tolerated her at all as an employer. And she fed them reasonably well of course, and that was what mattered most.
For himself, it was becoming more and more wearing to be always worried about the state of her mind, and he closed his own mind against the way she could make him feel when she was in one of her blacker moods. He loved her in so many ways still and although he often felt helpless to express the feelings and needs he did have for her he wanted to make her happy, if that were possible.
Sitting now in the churchyard, as Oliver went bumbling happily about among the gravestones, reading such Latin inscriptions as he could find—for he was proud of the newly acquired scraps of the classic tongue his father had taught him in recent months—Jonah turned his face up to the warmth of the young sun, his eyes closed, and wondered bleakly whether there was a more than reasonable cause for her rages. She had once told him that her father had been in some sort disturbed in his mind, had died in a lake in his own grounds. Perhaps the man, whoever he had been—and Celia, poor girl, had never known his name, let alone the man himself—had suffered some maggot in his brain that led him to the crime of suicide.
Jonah shivered a little at that thought and opened his eyes to stare sombrely at the trees above his head. He had heard often enough that people who did that were more than wicked, were mad as well, and that was a thought to make any married man and hopeful father shiver. And he lowered his head to look at his Oliver, now crouched before a moss-encrusted stone, carefully spelling out the words at which he was staring with his shortsighted gaze, and shivered in actual fact. No, he must not think of Celia in these terms. Not when there were Oliver and Phoebe to consider too. Her angers and her sulks were just that; merely expressions of a volatile temper. And somehow he must help her see that this time she was wrong in her judgements, that her rage was quite ill founded.
He tried again during luncheon to persuade her to come to visit Abby and discover for herself the truth of all she had been told, and all the time she resisted until he had said again with a sudden sense of rage on his own behalf that she was cruelly unjust not to come to see Abby and ask her for the truth of the situation, for he knew no other way to convince her; and she had looked at him for another long moment and then quite suddenly nodded.
‘Very well. We shall go to your sister’s house. If you are so determined,’ she said and her voice though still cold and clipped at least had lost some of its anger; and he smiled at her in deep relief and Oliver looked up from his plate and blinked at them both, and then returned stolidly to eating. Jonah said almost jovially, ‘That is splendid! This afternoon, then? I had arranged to go to collect Phoebe to bring her home at six o’clock, in time to send her a little earlier to bed, for she will be fatigued with the newness of her situation, no doubt. You will accompany me then?’
Oliver lifted his chin at that. ‘You said you would take me to the Gardens this afternoon, Papa, to sail my boat on the Long Water,’ he said and Jonah bit his lip. He had indeed made some such vague promise during their return walk along Bedford Street.
‘There will be time enough for that, I think, as well,’ he said after a moment. ‘Celia? Shall we walk in the park with Oliver and then make our way to Paddington Green from there? It is a lovely afternoon, after all—’
And to his surprise she had agreed, and returned to picking at her own hardly eaten meal, her head bent. He had looked at her, saddened at the sight of her pale cheeks and the violet smudges beneath her eyes, and had put his hand out impulsively towards her across the table. But she had not seen it so he had returned in silence to his own meal. Perhaps, when this afternoon was over, she would be happy again, he told himself optimistically. Perhaps.
All over London that morning and early afternoon, people looked up at the sky and smiled and told each other what a capital plan it would be to walk in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to admire the spring flowers and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine and see the new French fashions that would be sure to be paraded all along the Broad Walk and Constitution Hill on such a day. And little boys whooped with joy at such parental good sense and went to rummage in toy boxes for last year’s sailing boats to launch upon the Long Water by the Serpentine in competition with other small boys’ much inferior vessels.
Jody Lucas, for example, was quite sure his boat would outshine any that they saw there and he informed his fond Mamma as soon as she awoke that, weary as she was after last night’s late performance at the Haymarket and the crush of a party that had followed it at the Earl of Arundel’s house, that that was where she was to take him that afternoon.
15
The children were so cock-a-hoop at the sight of the handsome yellow landau, drawn by a pair of perfectly matched bays, in which Gideon arrived at Paddington Green that any embarrassment Abby might have felt at their meeting was quite lost in loud juvenile exclamations about the elegance of the yellow velvet fittings inside, the splendour of the folded leather hood outside, and the spiritedness of the horses.
Phoebe had stepped fearlessly to the head of one of the animals, her hand outstretched to pat its nose, but it had tossed its head in great disdain and bared its teeth momentarily so that she had squealed and jumped back to be caught by the ever watchful Frederick, and this little episode had made them all laugh; so that they were all well ensconced behind the liveried coachman before either of the adults had the opportunity to exchange more than the most commonplace of words.
But once the vehicle moved off, the horses lifting their heads in great style, for they too seemed to be infected by the gaiety of the sunshine, and the children kneeling up on the seat immediately behind the coachman so that they could watch his expert handling of the ribbons, they could speak without fear of being overheard.
But for a little while they did not, sitting side by side in some stiffness. Abby hiding a little behind her open parasol, a very pretty confection of cream silk and ribbon which most charmingly set off her straw bonnet with its fashionably short brim lined with blue satin and tied with rose spotted veiling. She had dressed with especial care for her drive, choosing her dark blue velvet cloak with the half cape sleeves and grey fur trim to set over her blue satin gown; and even had Ellie help her redress her hair so that although she still wore much of it in the usual soft knot at the nape of her neck, there were some soft curls escaping on each side of her bonnet to frame her face.
She had not thought particularly of what she was doing in making so much effort with her toilette, until now; and she felt quite extraordinarily embarrassed, more so than she would have thought possible, when Gideon at last broke the silence between them by saying gravely, ‘You look most delightful today, Abby. You quite outshine the sun.’
She felt her face stiffen with shyness, and was annoyed with herself; she, a woman of almost eight and twenty to be as put about by a prettily turned male compliment as any sixteen-year-old! And she turned her head to look at him and make some casual remark, but could not, for he too had clearly made great efforts with his appearance, wearing a most beautifully cut frock coat with very French-looking braid frogging fastening it over a shirt of blinding whiteness beneath a black silk cravat set in position between high collar points with a very handsome gold pin. His top hat with its rakishly elegant curling brim was set at an angle on his dark head, and he smelled faintly of eau de cologne. And quite involuntarily she smiled hugely and said, ‘My dear Gideon! You outshine us both! Such perfection of linen and such an effulgence of silk hat! Really, my dear, there can be no man to hold a candle to you for dress this side of Kensington Palace!’
And now it was his turn to be confused and he bit his lip and shook his head, and blinked, and then they both laughed, and at last they were comfortable again, and could sit and talk companionably as the landau went bowling along Wharf Road, crossing the smartness of Praed Street on its way to Polygon Street, which would lead them over the Oxford Road to enter the Park near the Serpentine.
‘I am glad the children approve of my equipage,’ Gideon said. ‘Do you think they will be disgusted if they discover that it is not precisely my own, but that I took it from the livery stable for the afternoon?’
