‘Might I wait, then? Are they gone for long?’
‘The ladies are away to the cottage, madam,’ he explained, speaking rather more slowly to me, as though now unsure of my brainpower. ‘The master is at home however, if you care to wait.’
I began shaking my head before he was finished. I could not imagine grilling Mr Duffy for clues and to serve him up the confection of half-truths that was to be my report from Daisy was unthinkable.
‘I shall write to them, then,’ I said. ‘About the wedding. A letter to the cottage will be fine. I only wanted to ask them about bridesmaids’ – um – anyway.’ I did not know the address of the cottage, of course, but thinking I could get it from somewhere, I shrank from asking this terrifying individual to produce a card for me. He was already looking at me suspiciously, although that might have been my guilty conscience, or might have been caused by my peculiarness in offering him so much information (far from normal behaviour). I could feel a blush begin to engulf me and sticking my nose in the air I turned to sweep out.
‘Mrs Gilver?’ came a soft voice from the stairs. Mr Duffy was there, halfway up with his finger keeping his place in a book. I cringed for an instant, then realizing that I was being ridiculous – my fear that everyone around me could divine my purpose was on a par with a child’s belief that it becomes invisible by shutting its eyes – I shook off my silliness and called up to him.
‘I was hoping to find your wife and girls. But I won’t dream of asking you to relay a message. Unless you have a hidden interest in voile which you rarely get the chance to indulge?’
‘Voile?’ he echoed, frowning.
‘I see not,’ I said. ‘It’s a kind of silk.’
‘Ah yes. The wedding,’ he said, and again his face smoothed into a smile as it had at dinner at Croys, a droop of relief followed by a weightless rising in his shoulders, as though he had put down two heavy bags and straightened again. ‘Not long now,’ he said. Very curious, this beaming happiness at the thought of losing his favourite daughter. Offloading Clemence would be a relief to any parent (although Lena seemed to like her well enough) but fathers are usually more gloomy to see the backs of their darlings and I was puzzled. I looked at him for a moment then, seeing the speculation of my own regard begin to draw a matching look from him, I made my goodbyes and fled.
I was only minutes away from Abercromby Place but, unable to face the desolation of the ladies’ lounge at the Caledonian Club, I resolved to slog back up the hill to the National Gallery, there to sit and think until I could get myself some luncheon and begin my afternoon’s shopping.
I had been in a huff (if I am honest) over missing London this year, but I was now beginning to see that I still had to get some clothes for summer. I would give a wide berth to horrid Forsyth’s, sitting there on the corner like a skeletal wedding cake, where I had spent far too many hours of my life kitting out boys for school, and would go instead to dear Jenner’s. I could not quite agree with its besotted architects that it looked just like the Bodleian Library but it had always seemed especially welcoming to ladies, what with the Caryatides and now with the new extension too, where an even larger dress department was to be found. My step quickened, until I remembered: shopping after lunch, thinking and Improving Art first.
On the way, I set myself to come up with a list of innocent reasons why a bride, her mother and her sister might desert their obligations and remove to a country cottage three weeks before a wedding, but before I had entered anything on my list, I was distracted by the sound of someone saying my name.
Alec Osborne was standing ahead of me on the pavement, looking very different in grey town-suiting and rather wan despite the freckle. I stopped and was glad of the chance to catch my breath although I resisted the temptation to puff and put my hand to my ribs.
‘I’ve just come from where I suspect you’re going,’ I said, managing to make my breath last to the end of the speech with only a little rasping.
‘You’ve just seen Cara?’ he asked.
‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘They seem to have gone off to their cottage. Unaccountably,’ I added, for no reason I could have explained. Alec Osborne nodded and screwed up his face.
‘They’re still there?’ he said. ‘I assumed they’d have come home… I mean since something seems to have… She’s broken it off, you see.’ I blinked once before realizing what he meant.
‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘I just spoke to her father and he certainly didn’t seem to think so.’ Alec Osborne fished a rather crumpled letter out of his breast pocket and made as though to unfold it.
‘I assumed she’d written from town,’ he said. ‘But I suppose they would have stayed away, wouldn’t they?’
I could do no more than stare at him uselessly. One would expect a jilted lover to look puzzled and upset but the way he was casting his eyes around and shifting from foot to foot spoke of something else besides.
‘Are you busy, just at this minute?’ he said. I shook my head. ‘I wonder then if you would be so kind -’ He broke off. The expression on my face must have revealed the lurch of dismay I felt at the prospect of holding his hand and there-there-ing maternally while he wept for his lost love. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said. ‘At least, I think you think something, and I do too.’
I gaped. What did he know?
‘I saw you talking to Lena and to Cara,’ he said. ‘Don’t you feel…? I hardly know what to call it, but don’t you have a feeling…?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I do.’
We walked to the gallery without speaking again, and only when we got there did it strike me how completely distracted he must be to trot along wordlessly beside me when only I knew where we were going. When we were climbing the steps, however, he raised his head, took in where we were, and nodded his approval.
Inside, it was more work than I had anticipated to find a suitable stopping place. The landscapes upon which we might have rested our eyes for refreshment without stimulation all had scribbling schoolchildren clustered before them, and the blood and swagger of the Biblical tableaux or the cavortings of various Venuses and Cupids (in those simpering pastel orgies fit only for cutting up and covering screens) were not at all appropriate. After all, however distracted Alec Osborne might be by suspicions akin to my own, he had still just been sacked with less than a month to go by a very pretty girl of whom I had no reason to believe he was not fond.
We trudged past a po-faced Madonna with one of those peculiar lanky babies on her lap then sank at last on to a rather collapsed circular velvet ottoman in front of a blameless view of Venice by Guardi. I waited for him to speak.
‘This came this morning,’ he said after a short silence, shoving the letter into my hands. I felt an equal pull towards devouring every word of it for clues and dropping it back into his lap in horror at the thought of reading it in front of him.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But describing it to you instead would only add furtiveness to the brew and how would that help?’ I could not suppress a quick smile. He was right. Sometimes a little coarseness is all that makes a thing endurable. Nothing, for instance, could be more excruciating than a bashful midwife. I resisted sharing this thought and began to read.
‘Dear Alec,’ it began and I was enough of a Victorian to be mildly surprised not to see ‘Dearest’. ‘I cannot marry you. I am very sorry for the hurt and trouble I know this will cause, but it is much better than what would come to pass if I were to keep quiet and go along with it. I cannot explain my reasons, except to say that I am convinced I could never make you happy, and that knowing that, I should be miserable myself.’ It finished with ‘Yours sincerely,’ which I quite saw was the only possible option, and was signed with a large, sweeping C.