But his mind was still running on the Langstones. “It’s a shame Jack died in the spring,” he said, wiping his fingers on his napkin.
“Isn’t it better for them? It must be awful if your son dies before you.”
“The point is, it means two lots of death duties within a year. One has to be practical.”
“Perhaps we should ask Marcus to dinner. Or even down to Monkshill for a weekend. It might help him take his mind off things.”
“If you like.”
Lord Cassington’s eyes returned to the casualties. The egg cup toppled over and fragments of ruined egg sprayed across the tablecloth.
Lady Cassington smiled. “He’s much better-looking than Wilfred,” she said. “And really quite grown-up.”
On Friday evening, Captain Ingleby-Lewis returned from the Crozier humming the opening bars of Offenbach’s Barcarolle over and over again. He let himself into the house and, still humming, zigzagged from side to side of the hall in the general direction of the stairs. At this moment, Mrs. Renton came out of her room carrying a pair of sheets. He collided with her, and the sheets fell to the floor.
“Madam,” said Captain Ingleby-Lewis, wrapping an affectionate arm around the newel post. “I can only apologize. The fault is entirely mine.”
Alerted by the noise, Lydia appeared at the head of the stairs. “Is everything all right?”
Mrs. Renton stared up at her, and said nothing. The Captain began to hum again and hauled himself steadily up the stairs. Mrs. Renton picked up the sheets.
Lydia came down to help her fold them. “Mr. Fimberry’s?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Renton said shortly. “No, no, Mrs. Langstone-you take the corners, all right, and then bring them toward my corners.”
Above their heads, the Captain and his Barcarolle moved across the landing and finally came to harbor in the sitting room.
Lydia said, “Does the name Penhow mean anything to you?”
“Why?”
“The sheets reminded me. I found a laundry mark on my sheet that said Penhow.”
The folding of the sheet had brought the faces of Mrs. Renton and Lydia only a few inches apart. The dark little eyes examined her.
“Now we fold it this way,” Mrs. Renton said. “This house used to belong to Miss Penhow.”
“What happened to her?”
“She went away.” Mrs. Renton stepped back and put the folded sheet outside Mr. Fimberry’s door. “Shall we do the other one?”
6
PHILIPPA PENHOW liked music. You had forgotten that. She considered that a taste for good music was doubly refined, both spiritual and genteel. Serridge played on that. He was good at finding out exactly what people wanted and then giving it to them.
Thursday, 13 February 1930 Yesterday evening I met Major Serridge at the Tube station at Oxford Circus. We had an early dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant in Soho whose name I forget. I had a glass and a half of wine and my head began to swim! Afterward he was all for getting a taxi, but I said I should prefer to walk. We reached the Wigmore Hall at a quarter past eight. Major Serridge had bought the expensive seats, at 12 shillings each. He refused to allow me to pay for mine. The recital began at half-past. Moiseiwitsch played divinely. I have never heard Chopin played with such feeling. The Prelude in A-flat major was particularly moving. I distinctly saw Major Serridge touch his eyes with his handkerchief. When it was over we stood for a moment outside the hall. It was a dank, foggy evening but I felt as if I was floating on air. He said, “After music like that, we should by rights have moonlight and roses.” The more I get to know him, the more I realize how sensitive he is. I was quite happy to catch a bus home but this time he positively insisted on hailing a taxi. At the Rushmere, he took me up to the door and thanked me for a wonderful evening. As we said goodnight, I fancy he gave my hand a little extra pressure. This morning, imagine my surprise when I found an envelope waiting at my breakfast table. A Valentine!! A day early, but never mind! Of course I don’t know who it was from, but I can’t help wondering. Who else could it be?
On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Howlett came to Bleeding Heart Square with a young assistant, a hungry-looking man who stared at Lydia as though he would have liked to devour her. Mr. Serridge had arranged for them to move the furniture from the cellar into Mr. Wentwood’s flat.
Mr. Howlett was out of uniform. His brown canvas coat deflated him and made him ordinary. Nipper followed the men into the house. He sniffed Lydia’s ankles and would only leave her alone when Mr. Howlett kicked him aside. Afterward, he tried to make friends with Mrs. Renton but she pushed him away.
“I don’t like dogs,” she said. “Stupid animals. Watch he doesn’t bring mud in the house or scratch the paint.”
Howlett and his assistant tramped up and down the stairs between the cellar and the attic flat. Nipper followed them from floor to floor, his claws scratching and rattling on the linoleum and the bare boards.
The furniture was old, dark and heavy. The men swore at the weight of it. They rammed a chest of drawers against the newel post on the first-floor landing and left a dent in the wood nearly half an inch deep. It was quite good furniture too, Lydia noticed, old-fashioned and gloomy but rather better than the pieces in her father’s flat. Perhaps it was a sign that Mr. Serridge valued Mr. Wentwood more than Captain Ingleby-Lewis.
Mr. Serridge supervised the work. Pipe in mouth, he wandered from attic to cellar. Lydia, as she passed to and fro between the kitchen, her bedroom and the sitting room, found him staring at her on several occasions. It was unsettling, but not in the usual way when men stared at her. It seemed to her that there was nothing lustful in his face, at most a look of curiosity and concentration, as if he were trying to work out a mathematical problem in his head.
Once or twice, he nodded to her and said, “All serene, Mrs. Langstone?”
Later that day, a smell of liver and onions spread through the hall and up the stairs.
“That smells good,” Howlett said to Mrs. Renton as he came down the stairs for the last time with the dog at his heels. “I wish I had that waiting at home for my tea.”
“If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,” Mrs. Renton said. “Good evening, Mr. Howlett.”
He grunted. The front door banged behind him, the hungry-looking assistant and Nipper. Mrs. Renton glanced at Lydia, who was coming downstairs with the rubbish.
“Anyway,” she said in a confidential whisper, “it’s not liver I’m cooking. It’s Mr. Serridge’s heart. Shame to waste it.”
Lydia disliked Sundays. She did not believe in God but she had endured for most of her life the necessity of paying her respects to him at least once a week. The Langstones, of course, were churchgoers. When they were in Gloucestershire, they attended church with the same unthinking regularity with which they voted Conservative or complained about their servants. Marcus’s mother said the Langstones were obliged to set an example. Privilege conferred its responsibilities.
But this Sunday was not like other Sundays. It was the eleventh day of the eleventh month-Armistice Day. It was an occasion that Marcus took seriously because the death of his brother Wilfred gave him a personal interest in commemorating the glorious dead. The houses where Marcus lived, the farms and investments that paid for the servants who looked after them, the club subscriptions, the bills from the tailor, the wine merchant and the butcher-all these should have been Wilfred’s. A quirk of fate had given Marcus flat feet, and had allowed Wilfred to be killed. Marcus felt obscurely that he owed his brother something. The observance of Armistice Day was the tribute that Marcus paid to the glorious dead, and in particular to Wilfred.