The Secret Countess

9

Rupert returned from London nursing a single and obstinately held idea. Anna must go. She must go now, immediately, before the wedding. She must be given the four weeks’ wages she would still have earned and be sent back to London. He was simply not prepared to have coal carried to his study by a girl whose brother had cut his teeth on the Crown of Kazan. The thing was intolerable and in any case Anna herself, as he now saw, had been a disruptive force ever since she came to Mersham. Once Anna went, reasoned Rupert with impeccable logic, everything would be all right. He would stop having nightmares, Uncle Sebastien would stop playing Stravinsky, Potter would sell the mare. Above all, Muriel, his chosen bride, would be loved and appreciated as she deserved to be.

He began, therefore, by tackling his mother.

The dowager was in her boudoir, dealing with some last-minute wedding invitations. There were dark circles under her fine, grey eyes and rather more chiffon scarves than usual seemed to have slipped from her shoulders to the floor.

‘Dismiss Anna!’ she said horrified. ‘But why, Rupert? She’s leaving anyway after the wedding.’

‘After the wedding,’ said Rupert, firmly if obscurely, ‘is too late.’

Lady Westerholme looked in bewilderment at her son. ‘Too late for what, dear?’

Rupert changed his tactics. ‘I found out quite a lot about her background when I was in town, Mother. Apparently she comes of a very distinguished family indeed.’

The dowager received this information without surprise. ‘Well, so I supposed. She has such lovely manners and speaks such pretty French. But really I cannot see that as a reason for sending her away before she wants to go. Look at the poor tsar. He couldn’t have been more distinguished and now he’s dead. And your Uncle Sebastien is so fond of her.’

‘Yes, well, that’s another thing—’

‘No, you’re wrong, Rupert. Uncle Sebastien doesn’t lay a finger on her, I’m sure. She’s like a daughter to him. And Baskerville adores her.’

A sudden memory of Anna held at bay by the lake, her hair tumbling in disarray over the desperately held towel, made Rupert momentarily shut his eyes.

‘Are you suggesting that we employ our servants for the sake of my dog?’ he asked savagely.

The dowager stared at him. ‘Why are you so angry with her, Rupert?’

‘I’m not, Mother.’ He tried again. ‘But you know Muriel doesn’t care for her.’

‘Oh?’ The dowager’s tone was distinctly cool. ‘I should have thought Anna was working very well for Muriel. I’ve been past Muriel’s room three nights running and found Anna sitting outside on a hard chair waiting up for her until well after midnight. And considering she’s up again at dawn to exercise—’ She broke off, put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, dear.’

Rupert’s face was like thunder. ‘I see. So Anna’s been exercising the new mare. I might have known it.’

‘Now, Rupert, you mustn’t blame Anna. It was Potter’s idea — he’d been watching her with the mare and he guessed she could ride. You must remember he only has the one boy now and there’s a great deal to do at present.’

‘I told Potter to sell the mare again. He has my strict instructions.’

‘Yes, of course; he’s going to, dear. But you can’t sell a horse like that to anyone.’ Her eyes softened. ‘She’s a beauty, Rupert. I tried her. Potter sent Alice to ask if Anna could borrow my habit. Anna wanted to ride bareback — he was very shocked! So I went down to see and they persuaded me to take her out just for an hour.’

Rupert forgot his anger. ‘I’m so glad, Mother. You’ve not been out since… George died, have you?’ His face lit up. ‘I’m an idiot! Of course, I’ll keep her here for you. Then you can come up whenever you like and—’

‘No, no, Rupert. That’s out of the question. It’s sweet of you, dearest, but it would be quite wrong. If Muriel doesn’t care to ride she certainly won’t want to keep horses for her mother-in-law. I’ll be very snug down in the Mill House, you’ll see.’ And the dowager frowned, for Colonel Forster was fussing about putting in a damp-course for her before she moved, not realizing that she had to be in there the day after the wedding. ‘As for Anna, dearest,’ she went on resolutely, ‘you and Muriel must do what you think best, of course. It would be very wrong of me to interfere. Only remember, Mrs Bassenthwaite is not at all well.’

It was Proom, accordingly, that Rupert summoned to his study.

To the suggestion that his newest housemaid be sent away with a month’s wages in lieu of notice, the earl’s butler listened with a sinking heart. Since Anna’s arrival, Mrs Proom had only thrown two flowerpots and they had been small ones.

‘Might I ask why you wish her to be dismissed, my lord?’

Rupert frowned. ‘Miss Hardwicke doesn’t care for her.’ And as Proom continued to stand impassively before him, he went on: ‘But that isn’t it. I found out certain things about her background which makes it most unsuitable that she should be employed as a domestic.’

Proom nodded. ‘Mrs Bassenthwaite and I were, of course, aware that she was of gentle birth. For this reason we were extremely reluctant to employ her.’

‘Well, then…’

‘However, it must be stated, my lord, that Anna has done everything she could to overcome her handicap. This is not to say that her adherence to the views of Mrs Selina Strickland has always been beneficial. In fact, only this morning James was threatening to throw all three volumes of the Domestic Compendium into the lake, Anna having asked him for calcined magnesia to polish Miss Hardwicke’s bedside grapes. But—’

‘Asked him for what?’ interrupted Rupert.

‘Calcined magnesia, my lord. It is a substance which is used in certain circles,’ said Proom dismissively, ‘to bring a heightened bloom to the fruit. A process analagous to the annointing of plums with Reckit’s Blue. Needless to say, I have never permitted such practices at Mersham. The fruit here is never tampered with.’

Rupert put down the paper knife with which he had been demolishing a number of hapless envelopes.

‘I can’t help wondering why they accept her, Proom? They must know she comes from a totally different world.’

‘Yes, my lord. They do.’ He paused, considering how much to put into words. ‘Perhaps it’s not generally realized that what a servant dreads is not hard work, it’s boredom. Housework can be extremely monotonous. And Anna… well, you can say a lot about Anna, but not that she is boring.’

‘No,’ said Rupert, allowing himself a wintery smile. He got up, went to the window, started playing with the tassel of the blind…

‘Things are not very easy at the moment,’ continued Proom, who had left Mrs Park searching wild-eyed through her cookery books for an alcohol-free wedding cake. ‘Periods of transition are always unsettling and Lady Westerholme will be greatly missed. To dismiss Anna now would not be at all good for morale. It would be regarded as a very grave injustice.’

‘But if she were paid—’

‘My lord, there is no way you could get Anna to accept money to which she would feel she was not entitled. She is extremely proud. She is also looking forward very much to the wedding. Russian weddings, as you are probably aware, are very different. Anna is planning to cut her hair.’

‘No!’ The earl had swung round, his voice, his whole manner so peremptory, that Proom looked at him in amazement.

‘There is nothing in the regulations to prevent it, my lord and—’

‘I forbid it,’ said the Earl of Westerholme. ‘I forbid it utterly and you may tell her so.’

To his own surprise, on going to talk to Muriel, who was writing letters in Queen Caroline’s bedchamber, Rupert received no thanks for his efforts to get rid of Anna.

‘Rupert, I beg you not to concern yourself with the indoor staff. I’ve told you that I mean to see to all that. After all, I don’t interfere with the running of the farms or the forests, do I, even though—’ She paused delicately.

‘Even though it is your money that makes it possible for me to go on running them,’ said Rupert levelly. ‘Yes, that’s true. And I certainly have better things to do than interfere with the servants. But I knew you were not pleased with Anna and…’

Muriel put up a restraining hand. ‘I admit that Anna is not what I call natural servant material, but I am not displeased with her work. Last night when we came back from London they sent a most unsuitable girl to wait on me — a long-nosed, frizzy-haired creature with a most impertinent manner.’

‘That’ll be Louise. She’s head housemaid, you see and—’

‘Please, dearest, there’s no need to explain. Let it suffice that I am perfectly prepared to put up with Anna until the maid I have ordered from Switzerland arrives. What I did want to speak to you about was your dog.’

Baskerville, hearing himself referred to, turned his massive head. Among his many excellent qualities, the earl’s dog did not number a quick intelligence. Even he, however, had gathered that, incredible as it seemed, his natural behaviour was not wholly pleasing to Muriel Hardwicke. Now, in a heroic effort to conform, he sat on his haunches by the door, repressing an almost overwhelming desire to examine the livestock under the fourposter, and ruining the patient, Landseer pose he had adopted with frequent and enormous yawns.

‘What about my dog?’ said Rupert lightly, momentarily letting his hand rest on Muriel’s hair. Perfectly groomed, perfectly golden, with its metallic lustre, it looked more as if it had been mined than grown.

‘You have often said,’ Muriel continued, ‘that my good nursing, my attention to hygiene, saved your life.’

‘Yes, I have said it,’ said Rupert, smiling. ‘And I still do.’

‘Well then, I know you will understand when I ask you not to bring Baskerville into my bedroom. Or into our bedroom when we are married.’ The pansy-blue eyes looked up appraisingly and it occurred to Rupert, suddenly, how rarely Muriel blinked. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of the work by Bestheimer and his associates on the transference of canine worms to the back of the human eyeball, but I assure you if you were—’

‘Baskerville goes to the vet every six weeks to be checked,’ said Rupert, his voice deceptively quiet.

‘I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that.’ She launched into a description of the lifecycle of Toxacara canis which would have given nightmares to Edgar Allen Poe. ‘So you see, dearest, I really must insist.’

‘Very well, Muriel; it shall be as you wish,’ said the earl. ‘Come, Baskerville.’

‘I didn’t mean—’ Muriel called after him, disconcerted by the look in his eyes.

But Rupert had gone.

It was not unexpected that the earl’s attempts to dismiss Anna should reach her ears. The following day, returning at dusk from an inspection of the haunted folly, the re-roofing of which his bailiff regarded as urgent, Rupert noticed that the door of the rose garden was ajar. Mr Cameron must be working late. He would just go in and have a word with him. Muriel had meant well, earlier in the day, when she offered to replace his ear-trumpet with one of the new-fangled hearing aids, but the old Scotsman was a crusty fellow and the moment had perhaps been unfortunate, for Mr Cameron had been showing them his new and lovely snow-white rose.

Putting his hand through Baskerville’s collar, Rupert pushed open the door. Judders of ecstasy and a violent vibrato of the single, coal-black wart on Baskerville’s blond cheek, prepared Rupert for what he would find — Anna, carrying a trug and a pair of secateurs, moving in a kind of dream among the flowers.

Tightening his grip on his dog, the earl advanced.

‘Good evening,’ he said pleasantly.

Ambushed, Anna stood her ground. Her head went up. ‘Good evening, your lordship.’

Rupert recoiled. Not since she had deplored Mersham’s lack of bathrooms had her ‘r’s rolled quite so terribly. It was her curtsy, however, that showed Rupert the full extent of her displeasure. Gone was the balletic homage, the dedicated servility. Anna had bobbed.

‘Is anything the matter?’

Anna had decided on frostiness, on silence, on le style anglais.

‘Nothing is the matter. As you perceive, I am picking flowers for Miss Hardwicke’s room. Mr Cameron has permitted it. I am not stealing.’

Rupert looked at her, completely bewildered. ‘No, of course you’re not stealing. What’s happened, Anna? Have I done anything?’

‘No,’ said Anna, still struggling with the concept of the stiff upper lip as purveyed in her infancy by Pinny and Miss King.

It was Baskerville, never an exponent of silent suffering, who put an end to this by twisting himself out of the earl’s grasp. He would, so long after his supper-time, have marginally preferred a rabbit, but Anna was undoubtedly the next best thing. By the time he had made this clear to her, Anna, trying to save her basket, had lost both her cap and her sang-froid.

‘Oh, chort!’ she said, looking up at her employer through pollen-dusted eyelashes. ‘You have made me so sad.’

‘I? I? For God’s sake, Anna.’

‘I was in the dressing room when you boasted to Miss Hardwicke how you have tried to send me away. And I do not know why because I have really tried to work hard and it is true I did not know how to gopher but this turned out not to be at all necessary and though I did play a very little the piano in the music room last week when I was dusting it was only for perhaps three minutes because it was the B flat étude which is very short as you know and in Russia always when we sent away a servant we allowed them first to explain so—’

‘Stop it! Stop it, Anna!’ Rupert reached out, took her by the shoulders. A mistake… More of a mistake than he would have believed possible. He dropped his arms, stepped back. ‘Please, for heaven’s sake, Anna. It wasn’t because I wasn’t satisfied with your work. Your work is excellent. It was because I met someone who’d stayed with you in Petersburg.’

He recounted his conversation with Mr Stewart, to which Anna listened with growing amazement.

‘You wished to dismiss me because Petya had cut his teeth on the Crown of Kazan?’

‘All right, I know it sounds absurd but—’

‘Absurd? It is crazy! Sergei has always said that the English aristocracy have brains like very small aspirins and now I believe it. In any case, the Crown of Kazan was very heavy. Niannka was always angry with Mama when she wore it because it gave her a headache.’

‘Niannka? Is that the lady with the mummified finger?’

Anna dimpled, but her eyes were sad, for Niannka’s desertion had hurt more than anything in the dark days of the revolution. ‘Yes. It was the finger of St Nino, who lived in the monastery at Varzia, where she was born. He has many fingers, that one, perhaps three thousand — the monks are such rogues!’

‘You’ve been there?’

She nodded. ‘We stayed with Niannka when Mama took the waters at Borzhomi. It was very beautiful. We ate with our fingers and slept on the ground and washed in the Kuru, which is very cold and green and runs down from the Caucasus, and the men had great moustaches and got drunk and fell out of their caves,’ said Anna, her face lighting up at the memory. ‘Only the chickens I did not like,’ she added, turning her thumb to reveal a white scar across its base.

‘And it’s certain that she robbed you?’

Anna shrugged. ‘Kira’s aunt saw her on the Anchikov Bridge, laughing with some soldiers of the Red Guard after we had fled. It is natural, perhaps. She was a woman of the people.’

‘She undoubtedly seems to have been that,’ said Rupert reflectively. Then returning to the attack: ‘Anna, you must see how unsuitable it is, your being here.’

‘No, I do not see it.’ Her eyes kindled. ‘I know. It is because I am a woman! It is all right for Sergei to be chauffeur to an amazingly stupid duchess, though he has seize quartiers and his grandfather was a grand duke, and it is all right for Colonel Terek to drive a taxi though his family has owned three-quarters of the Kara Kum, but I… I may not work. Naturally. In a country where women must be trampled to death by ’orses before they are permitted to vote one would expect this.’

‘No, Anna, you’re wrong. I worked with women in the war — I know very well what they’re capable of.’

‘Then why? Just because we are rich in Petersburg?’

‘Not only rich — Oh, Anna try to understand. In Russia they probably wouldn’t have allowed me over your doorstep.’

‘Pas du tout.’ She dimpled up at him. ‘Mama was extremely democratic. Earls with large estates and many Christian names were frequently admitted. By the front door, even.’

‘Oh, God.’

They had begun to walk between the fragrant bushes, drawn by the remembered perfection of Mr Cameron’s new rose.

‘You really like it here, don’t you?’ said Rupert wonderingly. ‘Though we work you half to death, though your hands are raw and chapped, though you’re cruelly short of sleep…’

They had reached the rose. ‘Yes,’ said Anna so quietly that Rupert had to bend his head to hear. ‘Yes, I like it here. I like Mrs Park, who is so gentle and so good, and James, who has struggled and struggled to make himself strong. I like the courage of your mother, who is so patient with the spirits who plague her, and I like your uncle, who hears music as if each time it had been just composed. I like the warriors on your roof and your foolish dog and the catalpa tree that leans into the lake… And this rose, I like,’ she said, bending in reverence to Mr Cameron’s masterpiece. ‘Yes, very much I like this rose.’

She fell silent. (And if I were to take the secateurs, thought Rupert, and cut each and every blossom from this incomparable bush and pour them in her lap, what then?)

Anna looked up at him. Her face crunched into its monkey smile. ‘And the appendix of Mrs Proom,’ she continued, ‘ah, that I truly love!’

Rupert lifted his hands in a mocking gesture of surrender. ‘Then stay,’ he said, ‘heaven forbid that I should come between you and Mrs Proom’s appendix,’ — and left her.

The dowager was tired. She had spent the morning in the village, comforting Mrs Bunford, who was still very much upset at having been asked to make neither the wedding gown nor any of the dresses for the bridesmaids and, to console the widow, had ordered her own outfit of powder blue wild silk. To give Mrs Bunford wild silk to ruin was the act of a lunatic and the dowager was already regretting it. Then as she walked to her brougham she was accosted by tiny, tottery Miss Frensham who had played the organ in Mersham Church for forty years. Miss Frensham, rheumy-eyed and quavery, wanted to know if it was true that Miss Hardwicke wanted neither ‘The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden’ nor the ‘Lohengrin March’ like they always had, but something modern that Miss Frensham was almost sure she wouldn’t be able to play since she couldn’t see too well nowadays to read new music. Because if so, perhaps they’d like to get someone else to play, though it wouldn’t be easy not to see Master Rupert married, not after she’d read him every single page of The Prince and the Pauper when he had the measles, because he always noticed when you missed a bit out, not like other children…

By the time the dowager had soothed Miss Frensham she was late for her appointment with Colonel Forster at the Mill House and must, she realized, have made a mess of explaining why she had to move into the Mill House immediately without waiting for the improvements that the Forsters were so kindly putting in for her, because Colonel Forster had looked at her very strangely and Mrs Forster had patted her hand in quite the wrong way when she left. And when at last she had gone home and sat down for a moment to rest, there had been the usual psychic vibrations and the voice of Hatty Dalrymple had come through as clearly as if she were still beside her in the dormitory all those years ago at school. Hatty, who had passed over as the result of a boating accident at Cowes, had always been a gusher and the information that she could see rays of aetheric ecstacy emanating from Rupert and his lovely, lovely bride did little for the dowager, remembering the look in Rupert’s eyes these days.

And now she really had to make up her mind whether or not to send a wedding invitation to the Herrings.

Mr and Mrs Melvyn Herring and their twin sons, Donald and Dennis, were not so much herrings as sheep, and extremely black ones at that. The dowager came from an old Irish family whose pedigree was excellent, but whose upbringing, on a wild and lovely estate in County Down, had been unconventional and lacking in discipline. As a result, when the dowager’s youngest sister, Vanessa, fell passionately in love with the extremely handsome hairdresser who came to prepare her glorious, golden ringlets for her coming-out ball, she had put lunacy into action and eloped with him. For this attack of passion, poor Vanessa Templeton paid dearly, coming round, so to speak, a few months later — to find herself pregnant, penniless and desperate. Whether she died of a broken heart or puerperal fever following the birth of her son, Melvyn, it would be hard to say. Whatever the reason, there now began the long process of dumping Melvyn on anyone who would have him which was to take up so much of his father’s life. For Vanessa Templeton’s love child was one of nature’s genuine abominations: a deeply unpleasant child who grew in deceit, temper and general sliminess into the kind of adult who can empty a room within minutes of entering it. Melvyn’s sojourn at the Templetons’ estate in County Down was burned into the marrow of every one of its inhabitants, from Lady Templeton herself down to the obscurest scullery maid. The dowager, inviting him to Mersham in his early adolescence, had been harrowed by this resemblance and by the fact that he looked like a smeared and blotched version of her own Rupert. During this visit, Melvyn had (at the age of fourteen) got the stillroom maid pregnant, lamed George’s favourite hunter with an air gun and stolen a hundred gold sovereigns from her husband’s desk. During a second visit, at the age of sixteen, he had started a fire in the morning room with an illicit cigarette and left with his aunt’s favourite Meissen figurine, which he sold to a dealer before it could be traced. Fortunately, Nemesis overtook him in the form of a waitress called Myrtle who, finding herself pregnant by him, got him to the altar. The birth of Dennis and Donald squared the account for the twins, growing from pimpled, puking and overweight blobs of dough into pallid, whining mounds of flesh, finally put the Herrings beyond the social pale. No one felt able to invite four horrible Herrings to their house and, after an abortive attempt by the Templetons to ship them off to America, Australia — anywhere — the Herrings dropped into obscurity in a Birmingham suburb.

But Rupert’s wedding… The dowager, remembering her lovely, youngest sister, dangerously allowing sentiment to overcome reason, made up her mind.

‘I’ll ask them,’ she decided. ‘After all, Melvyn is my nephew.’

And so the gold-embossed invitation bidding Mr and Mrs Melvyn Herring and Donald and Dennis Herring to the wedding of Muriel Hardwicke with Rupert St John Oliver Frayne, Seventh Earl of Westerholme, in the church of St Peter and St Paul on the 28 July at 12.30 and afterwards at Mersham, dropped on to the threadbare linoleum of the Herrings’ hall in 398 Hookley Road, Birmingham — with consequences which no one, at this stage, could possibly have foreseen.

The wedding preparations now accelerated towards their climax. Carriers drew up, continuously, delivering antique wine coolers, famille vert bowls, ormolu clocks and a set of matching beermats showing views of the Hookley Road, which the Herrings, enchanted to be taken up again by their grand relations, had pilfered from their local pub. The Rabinovitches, exceeding even their usual generosity, sent a six-hundred piece armorial dinner service decorated in sepia and gold. Muriel moved among her wedding gifts with great efficiency, acknowledging everything meticulously as soon as it arrived and personally instructing Proom as to its display in the ante-room to the gold saloon. Old Lord and Lady Templeton wrote that they would come from Ireland. Minna Byrne most nobly offered to accommodate the Duke and Duchess of Nettleford and their four younger daughters, leaving only the Lady Lavinia to sleep at Mersham. The dowager wrote a friendly note to Dr Lightbody and his wife and was relieved, though surprised, that Muriel apparently had not one living relation who would wish to see her married.

But of course the bulk of the work fell on the staff. The influx of house guests for the wedding meant the opening up of rooms in the north wing and, once again, the maids were up at dawn, blackleading and dusting, washing the wainscot, taking curtains down and carpets up. Over the wedding breakfast itself, the dowager had made a stand. This was to be her last occasion as hostess at Mersham and there were to be no taboos. Only the best champagne and the choicest dishes would be served and, though there might be a few special alcohol-free dishes for Muriel and Dr Lightbody, everything else would be as fine as Mrs Park could make it. So there was singing again in the kitchen as the gentle cook broke thirty-three eggs into her big bowl for the wedding cake and Win’s round face beamed with relief, seeing her adored Mrs Park restored to happiness.

As for Rupert, he now did what troubled human beings have always done — he buried himself in work. Fortunately, there was enough of it. The estate had been neglected for years. Freed, now, from financial restraints, Rupert spent hours with his foresters, his farm manager, his bailiff. The new earl’s capacity for listening, his high intelligence and quick concern, were a boon to the men who worked for him. They brought him their plans and hopes, their troubles and their prejudices. As he walked through his forests, pored over drainage plans, discussed cropping programmes and roofing materials, Rupert was content. Only at night, in the little room in the bachelor wing which he still preferred to his now spring-cleaned master suite, did the facade crack and into the landscape of his earlier nightmares there entered a new figure: a still, dark-eyed girl who stood with bent head, waiting — and when he reached for her, was gone.

Then, with less than four weeks to the wedding, he suddenly announced his intention of going to Cambridge ‘on business’. While Muriel was still formulating her displeasure he had taken the Daimler and gone.

That afternoon, going into the housekeeper’s room to take tea as was his custom, Proom found Mrs Bassenthwaite sitting in her chair, doubled up and groaning with pain. The following day, in Maidens Over Hospital, she was operated on for the removal of her gall bladder.

At this crucial time, Mersham was without a housekeeper. Muriel saw this as her chance and, with characteristic efficiency, she took it.