The Love Knot Page 32

  ‘No-one has ever spoken to me like this before, Mrs Brancaster, not ever.’

  The sound of the peppermint being sucked was too much for Mercy, and she very nearly started laughing.

  ‘In that case, perhaps someone should have spoken to you like this. This place is not being looked after as it should, either by you or by the other servants. Either you decide to do something about it, or I shall decide to do something about you’

  ‘I have been with Mr Brancaster, as I say, for twenty years. He has never had a complaint, nor indeed has anyone who has come to the house, Mrs Brancaster, not even Lady Violet, and she has standards if anyone has, I should have thought.’

  And so at long, long last the impertinence of the servants, their lack of proper attention to what she wanted, became clear to Mercy. All the time they had, all of them, been laughing at her because they knew what she had not known, that before her marriage, her own stepmother had been lying upstairs with her husband.

  ‘Yes,’ Mercy said, at her most Cordel, and she stared icily into the housekeeper’s eyes. ‘I must agree, when it comes to housekeeping Lady Violet does have standards. What a great pity that she does not have the morals to match. Now, you had better pack your things and I will ask Josephine to take over your duties, with me, until such time as you can be replaced. Goodbye, Mrs Tomkins.’

  ‘But my reference, Mrs Brancaster?’

  ‘For your reference I should apply to Lady Violet and my husband if I were you, Mrs Tomkins.’

  In some strange way Mercy knew that she would pay for dismissing the housekeeper, but she felt so much better at that moment, she really did not care. And far better again when she saw the wretched woman climbing into the trap that came to collect her to take her to the station.

  But it was a temporary triumph, for following Mrs Tomkins’s dismissal, one by one the other servants left too, until Mercy found herself calling the London agencies and practically begging them to send her down more servants.

  Domestic servants do not like the country, nor can they be expected to take to it, unless they’ve been brought up there, madam, the owner of one agency wrote to her.

  Mercy was still in the middle of her crisis when Gabriel Chantry arrived one fine spring afternoon with a pair of splendid oak chairs for the hall. And Gabriel brought with him, besides his warm presence, his gaiety and his self-deprecation, the solution to Mercy’s servant problem.

  ‘What you need are the Shaughnessys. They have been in the village for years, and they have seven children. Three strapping sons, two good girls of their own and two adopted cousins who lost their mother. I would think they would spare you at least three or four of their family to come and dress up in country tweed and stand around putting logs on the fire, or whatever your requirements are. And being that the sons are so tall, they will look more than handsome.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Chantry, do you think? Not a servant to be had at the moment, not for the country, not that anyone would wish to have in their house, anyway. Or so the agency says, but then people at agencies are so snobbish they have the practice of making everyone else feel inadequate down to a truly fine art.’

  Gabriel laughed, and Mercy saw herself from his point of view – a rich young woman, with a house in perfect modernized taste, a husband and a son, and no cares. But what he said next rather disproved this.

  ‘I am so glad to see you – better, Mrs Brancaster. If you will forgive the impertinence, I have been worried about you, knowing that – for whatever reason – you have been suffering.’

  Mercy stared at him. ‘Was it so obvious?’ she asked sadly.

  He looked down at the hand he was about to shake, reluctant to let her see the emotion in his eyes.

  ‘I am afraid so.’

  As always Gabriel Chantry’s taste proved to be impeccable, as much in potential servants as in furniture or curtaining. Two of the Shaughnessy boys were hired as footmen and two Shaughnessy sisters and cousins for maids, and the London agency, perhaps sensing they were about to lose out on their fees, finally sent a tall, middle-aged man who arrived from London with impeccable credentials and a loathing for cities, which immediately prompted Mercy to hire him as a butler.

  It was he who finally opened the door to John Brancaster when he returned home.

  Brancaster stared at the tall impeccable butler at the door. ‘Who the devil are you, man?’

  ‘Jessop, sir.’

  ‘Where is my – where is Mrs––’

  ‘Mrs Brancaster is in the library, sir.’

  ‘That is my wife, Jessop. I meant my housekeeper.’

  ‘As I said, sir, Mrs Brancaster is in the library. No doubt she will be able to bring you abreast of events for herself. I am only newly hired.’

  ‘Well, that is as maybe.’

  Jessop stared after Mr Brancaster. He was not such a fool as to attempt to announce a man to his wife in his own house. Nor was he such a fool as to tell that man that he had long ago lost the reins of this particular steed, and forfeited for ever the right to hire or fire the butler. Gossip was such, in the village, and in the pub, not to mention the servants’ hall, that everyone knew that Mrs Brancaster was at last determined on getting her own way in her own house. Josephine had told Mrs Shaughnessy in the village, and of course Mrs Shaughnessy had told Mr Shaughnessy, who had of course to go to the pub to refill his pot of beer, and he had fallen into talking, as men will, and the upshot of it all was that everyone, except Mr Brancaster, knew that Mrs Brancaster had changed.

  ‘John.’

  John Brancaster knew as soon as he pushed open the library door. It was not just the new grown-up look to her hair, the cottage loaf style that so many women still favoured, nor the flattering tucked linen blouse worn with a straight skirt of darkest green and a ceinture with a silver buckle. It was not the small watch set to one side of the blouse, or the tightly buttoned boots of soft kid to match her skirt – it was the look in her eyes.

  John saw at once that at Christmas he had left a girl, and he had returned to find a woman.

  Mercy was no longer the girl he had married, and John saw it in one awful moment. It was such a frightening moment that he forgot that he was angry at finding a new butler instead of Mrs Tomkins, and that he was standing in dusty travelling clothes, and that he was carrying, for some reason that he could not now remember, a whip.

  ‘How are you, John?’

  He removed his motoring gloves one by one, staring at her. ‘I am, madam, as you see me. And you?’

  ‘Quite so.’

  He moved towards her. ‘May I greet you?’

  ‘But of course.’

  He did not dare use the word ‘kiss’, but nevertheless Mercy leaned forward and proffered her cheek. For a second John found his eyes closing as an unknown fragrance filled his senses and he remembered how soft and young Mercy’s skin was in comparison to that of Lady Violet, and how youthful her figure, how attractive her voice and how gentle her ways compared to her stepmother. And as if waking from an illness he remembered how badly he had treated her in continuing with his hunting when he should have been by her side when the baby had arrived.

  Lady Violet had said, before they parted in London, ‘Do not be surprised if there are dreadful reproaches. I hear my poor stepdaughter has gone mad. She certainly showed every evidence of it when she visited us at Cordel Court. A great many women go quite mad after childbirth.’

  But it seemed that Lady Violet was wrong, because far from looking insane Mercy was smiling in a calmly affectionate manner, and a new footman, resplendent in new tweeds, was offering ‘sir’ his favourite pre-dinner drink, and the flowers everywhere were beautifully arranged in great cascades of early leaves and blooms, and the library fire was crackling in the way a fire always does when it is burning young wood.

  ‘How beautiful everything looks, Mercy.’ He sighed, suddenly unafraid to be appreciative. ‘I have really been away far too long. I have missed – seeing you.’ He watched her as she sat, perf
ectly composed, opposite the fire by which he now stood. ‘I have even missed hearing your voice, do you know that?’

  His tone was that of a man waking up from a dream, a man who had been away on a long voyage and known many excitements, most of which, to his own puzzlement, he could not now quite remember.

  He stared down at Mercy and for a second she had the feeling that he might be going to ask her where he was. That she might be going to have to say to him, as to a man waking up from an unconscious state, You’re here in the library at Brindells, John, so much did he suddenly seem to be coming back to an old but familiar – even, it occurred to her suddenly, loved – reality.

  ‘Would you like to come up and see your son, John? Would you like to see John Edward?’

  ‘John Edward? Yes, of course I should like to see the baby.’

  He looked suddenly so nervous that Mercy put out a hand to him and squeezed his arm, remembering how much her father had feared babies, only wanting to wave at them from afar and then get back, as quickly as possible, to his own life.

  ‘It’s all right, he is all bathed and beautiful. Josephine has him as brushed and bouncing as if he was going in for a baby competition at the village fair!’

  She laughed suddenly, and again she had the sensation that John was waking up from a bad dream, that he had been in some kind of hell and was only now coming back, if not to heaven, at least to an earth that he could recognize.

  If John Brancaster was nervous, no-one could have been more nervous than John Edward’s nanny.

  She bobbed a curtsy to Mr Brancaster while keeping one arm around the baby, propped up against some temporary cushions in his cot and blissfully unaware of the emotions that surrounded him at that moment.

  Josephine did not really like men. She never had, not really. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that she had seen what her mother had suffered, and now she had seen how Mrs Brancaster had suffered these last months nothing much had happened to change her opinion of the opposite sex. She did not care to think about how long Mr Brancaster had been away, or of the unhappiness that had been her young mistress’s lot, and so it was really against her principles to smile at this tall, dark middle-aged man standing in her nursery. Indeed, on hearing that Mr Brancaster was expected that day she had fantasized that she would not acknowledge him, so badly did she think of him. But, on the other hand, given that her monthly wage of five pounds was badly needed at home, when all was said and done it would have been foolish not to look at least pleasant in some sort of a way.

  John Edward, bless him, smiled at his father too, and it seemed to both the women that there was no need to state the obvious, which was that he looked almost exactly like the man bending over his cot. The same dark hair, the same eyes, the same long, elegant fingers. As babies sometimes do, John Edward had obligingly changed from looking like his mother in the first few weeks of his life to looking like a mirror image of his papa.

  Mercy broke the long silence that had followed John’s entrance into the nursery. ‘We are changing for dinner, John. Your clothes should be laid out by now in the old suite of rooms which are now yours.’ And then she said, ‘I expect you would like to hold John Edward first though, wouldn’t you?’

  Josephine, most reluctantly, picked up her charge and placed him in his father’s arms, and a look that was quite untranslatable crossed John Brancaster’s face as he stared down into a miniature of himself.

  Later, at dinner, John’s eyes, ever appreciative of women and all their devices, every nuance of costume and hairstyle, every touch of style, stared down the dining table at Mercy in approval.

  ‘You look en plein beauté, Mercy dear, really you do. Wonderfully pretty, prettier than I have seen you look in many months.’

  Mercy forbore to comment that he had not actually seen her for many months, and instead smiled her thanks for the compliment.

  She was wearing a low cut evening dress of delicate chiffon. It was actually over two years old, but she had thought that most probably John, being a hunting man, would not remember it. The skirt was cut in three layers with a lace-edged train, while the bodice was of a dark blue and had its own train which fell slightly shorter than that of the skirt, both in width and length.

  John raised his wine glass to her as she raised hers to him.

  ‘To John Edward.’

  ‘To John Edward.’

  They both drank.

  ‘He looks so like his papa, don’t you think?’ Mercy asked.

  ‘Let us drink to him again, my dear.’

  Mercy stared down the table at her husband, realizing of a sudden that his deep desire to toast his son had more to do with his equally deep desire to become inebriated than with celebrating the safe arrival of an heir to Brindells.

  There were no servants in the room, which was probably why he was suddenly prompted to ask after her life since Christmas.

  ‘Oh, I have been doing very well, thank you, John. I have quite finished the decorating, and Mr Chantry is as pleased as I am, and I hope you are too.’

  ‘Ah yes, Mr Chantry. He of the beard and the deep knowledge of antiques.’

  John drank again, once more too fast, and this time alone.

  A silence fell, a silence which Mercy had no intention of filling, for she had vowed that she would not return to that particular form of conversational anxiety.

  Perhaps this unnerved her husband because he was the first to break their silence.

  ‘You have changed, Mercy,’ he said, blinking slightly in the candlelight. ‘I truly would not know you as the girl I left.’

  Mercy smiled. ‘But that is good, surely?’

  ‘It is not the same, certainly, but – I have to tell you, I would like to see the other Mercy coming back, some time soon. Perhaps it is not possible immediately, but perhaps soon? I liked the other Mercy. She was not so … serious, was she? She was more innocent, I suppose is what I am trying to say.’

  Feeling that she might be about to say something she would quite definitely regret, Mercy stood up suddenly and left him, but she was not alone for long. Only a few minutes later John joined her in the drawing room, bringing with him a large glass of port.

  He sat down opposite her, the fireplace between them, obviously determined to speak in as frank a way as possible, and equally obviously more than a little worse for wear.

  ‘I understand that Lady Violet has sustained a visit from you, Mercy, that you went to see her at Cordel Court,’ he said, clearly having found the determination that he needed in the vintage port.

  ‘Yes, that is quite right.’ Mercy remained as still as a statue, and only the gentle tapping of her fan against the palm of her hand gave any indication of her inner nerves. ‘Yes, I went to Cordel Court.’

  ‘You went to Cordel Court, but you left shortly afterwards?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course?’

  ‘Yes, of course. As a married woman I could not be expected to stay under the same roof as my husband’s mistress, after all, John, could I?’

  ‘But she is not – but she is your stepmother. You hurt her feelings, by acting as you did. She told me so. She was most hurt.’

  ‘I hate to contradict you, John, but Lady Violet has few feelings, and those that she has she does not keep in her heart, but in quite another part of her body.’

  He was in the act of finishing his port, but at this last statement he started to cough. Mercy waited, in silence, for him to stop coughing, where once, only a few months before, she would have rushed to his side, all concern, to pat him on the back.

  ‘That is not a very pretty thing to say about Lady Violet, Mercy,’ he said, eventually.

  ‘Pretty or not, it is the truth as I see it, John. You may see it quite differently, I suppose.’

  ‘Please don’t be like this. It is almost as if you have become – hard, overnight.’

  He looked at her and his voice was sad, almost pleading, echoing almost precisely how her stepmother�
�s had sounded just before Mercy left her what seemed like weeks before. It was as if they were both saying, But you’re not like this, you’re soft and pliant and you see everything from everyone else’s point of view. If we are as we are, you must remain as you are.

  Mercy looked across at him, and knowing that she had the advantage of not having drunk more than one glass of wine she put her head on one side, and smiled.

  ‘No, John, I have not grown hard, I have grown used. I have grown used to the idea of my husband lying with another woman. I have grown used to the idea of life not being about love, but about love making. I have grown used to the way that nothing is as we wish it to be, and most of all I have come to understand that I was right. I should never have married you. You did not, and never could, love me as I loved you. You did not and would not, and have not. It is a fact. There is nothing to be done about it. There is no blame. I understand. I wish I did not, but I do. You and Lady Violet have not just a passion but a secret between you, something that I can never share, she told me.’

  John frowned, suddenly looking genuinely puzzled and about to say something, but Mercy carried on determinedly.

  ‘Most of all I understand that what my stepmother said was true. I am stupid. I was stupid. But at least now I have actually grasped that, and so I have a small chance of becoming less stupid. I realize of course that I will never be hopeful again. Nor will I ever try to turn people into saints simply because that is how I want to see them. I accept that to be a foolish vision of the world. What you see as being hard is, believe me, merely acceptance of my own stupidity and a determination to change, and to go on – with truth.’

  ‘You exaggerate your stupidity, believe me. It is because you are still hurt. All you have ever been, surely, is just young?’

  Mercy shook her head sadly, feeling for him suddenly, feeling for his sudden longing to undo the hurt, as if he were her child, and not her husband.

  ‘No, John, I have changed. I am only too aware that you thought of me as a poor sort of creature, a plain little girl to be rescued from a gilt chair and roped into marriage for want of something else to do, as my stepmother did, and I can understand that.’