Chapter Three
Joseph had started life as Giuseppe in a newly arrived Italian family some fifty years before. He had now been Joseph for most of that time, and he spoke with much less accent than Anna. They had married as a matter of convenience. He was dark and of medium height, with the manner of a superior upper servant. When he had set down the tea-tray and gone out of the room, the Miss Benevents told Candida all about him and Anna, speaking in alternate sentences.
‘He served in the first world war and was wounded.’
‘He was lame for quite a long time.’
‘He has been with us ever since he recovered.’
‘He was, fortunately, too old to be called up in the last war.’
‘He is not at all suited to be a soldier.’
‘He and Anna got married instead. It is more convenient that way.’
‘It is much more convenient.’
They did not give Candida time to say anything. She sat on a small gilt chair and balanced a fragile cup upon a slippery saucer. The china was very good and very thin. The saucer was the kind that has no hollow to keep the cup in its place.
Miss Olivia continued the discourse.
‘We are very fortunately situated as regards our staff. Anna’s niece Nella looks after the bedrooms, and a woman comes out from Retley on a bicycle.’
‘Or on the bus if the weather is bad,’ said Miss Cara.
‘It is all very convenient. Let me cut you some of this cake.’
‘Anna makes very good cakes,’ said Miss Cara.
As they sat one on either side of her, Candida was obliged to keep on turning her head. It seemed rude not to look at the aunt who was speaking, but she had no sooner turned towards one than the other took up the tale. They were really very much alike, but she thought that she would know them apart. Miss Olivia had a more decided voice and manner than Miss Cara, and she definitely took the lead where Cara merely echoed and agreed. Olivia had a small brown mole high up on her right cheek like a patch. Candida wondered if they were twins. And she wondered just how long she was going to be able to bear this visit.
Miss Olivia poured a second cup of tea from an ornate and capacious pot.
‘This tea-service came into the family in 1845 when Gerald Benevent married Augusta Cloudsley. Her mother was the Honourable Fanny Lentine, a daughter of Lord Ledborough, but her father was a wealthy City merchant. The tea-service is handsome and valuable, but we have always regarded the marriage as something of a mésalliance.’
‘It is the only time that we have ever been connected with trade,’ said Miss Cara.
The room was very warm and the lights very dazzling. Candida began to have that slightly floating feeling which comes with the onset of sleep. She had had many wakeful nights in the last days of Barbara’s life, and since her death she had been working very hard, cleaning, clearing, sorting, and packing up. Last night she had been too tired to sleep at all. The lights shimmered overhead and the voices of the little black ladies came and went.
She must have slipped from waking into sleeping, because just for a moment the white drawing-room was gone, and the glittering chandeliers. Instead there was a narrow dark hall with a little window through into a room next door. She had been signing her name in a book which lay on a ledge in front of the window. The ink in the pen which she had laid down was still wet. The name was black on the page of the open book – Candida Sayle. She turned away from it, and there were two little black ladies looking over her shoulders, one on either side, in the dark hall. She couldn’t see them well because the hall was so dark. One of them said,
‘Candida Sayle – a very unusual name,’ and the other one nodded.
She woke up with a jerk. Her cup was sliding in the smooth flat saucer. The dream could really only have lasted for a moment, because the cup would have started to slide at once, and it hadn’t had time to fall. How awful if it had fallen on to the carpet! She could almost see the puddle of tea and broken bits. The shock of it woke her right up. She put down the cup and saucer on the tray, and heard Miss Olivia say,
‘The china is French. It belonged to my grandmother. Not one piece has ever been broken.’
A sense of the narrowness of her escape quite swamped the memory of the dream. After a few more particulars about the tea-set and its original owner, who must have been her own great-great-grandmother, the conversation drifted to other objects in the room. The mirror over the mantelpiece had been brought from Holland by Edward Benevent in 1830. The mantelpiece itself had been imported from Italy by his father.
‘He did not, of course, go there himself,’ said Miss Olivia. ‘No Benevent has ever set foot in that country since our ancestor left it in the seventeenth century. While their rights were not admitted and the relationship ignored it would have been beneath their dignity to do so. However strongly the ancestral tie is felt, however strongly the family tradition is observed, we could never consent to visit Italy except on the clear understanding that we are true and legitimate descendants of the ducal house of Benevento.’
Miss Cara shook her head.
‘We could never consent.’
Since Candida had not the slightest idea what they were talking about, she thought she had better not say anything at all. There was, apparently, no need for her to do so. Stiffly upright behind the heavily embossed tray, the teapot, the water jug, the enormous sugar-basin of Augusta Cloudsley’s tea equipage, Miss Olivia continued to talk. She may or may not have noticed a slight vagueness in Candida’s expression, but she stopped suddenly in the midst of some observations on the value of family traditions and the necessity of maintaining them, to say in a sharpened voice,
‘You are, of course, acquainted with our family history.’
Candida’s colour rose.
‘Well – I’m afraid -’
‘Incredible! I could not have believed it! Your grandmother was, after all, our sister. I believe that she did not die until her children were nine and ten years of age – quite old enough to have been grounded in the historical facts. But of course her marriage – my father would neither acknowledge nor condone it – she may have found the subject too painful.’
Miss Cara raised a lace-edged handkerchief to the tip of her nose and sniffed.
‘Oh, yes.’
Miss Olivia threw her a reproving glance.
‘It will be for us to supply the deficiency – ’ she began, when the door opened and a young man came into the room. He was of medium height with brown eyes, very dark hair, and a most charming smile. He was, in fact, an extraordinarily handsome and vital creature. The Miss Benevents’ faces lighted up at the sight of him, their small pinched features relaxed, and the air of solemnity was gone. Speaking both together, they said,