‘Derek!’ Miss Cara adding, ‘My dear boy!’
He came up to the table and bent to kiss them both. Miss Olivia introduced him.
‘This is our secretary and adopted nephew, Derek Burdon. He is compiling a history of the family. He has recently been in Italy and has returned with some very valuable additional material. He has not been able to sort and arrange it yet – these things take time. We thought perhaps it might interest you to help him in his labours.’
Candida thought, ‘Well it will be something to do.’ She met a sparkling glance of the brown eyes, and the prospect brightened a little. He looked as if the family history would not bulk so largely as to preclude the possibility of a few lighter moments. In fact he was young, and he looked as if he might be fun. She was to learn that he was an adept at getting his own way with the old ladies and at putting off until at least the day after tomorrow whatever he did not incline towards doing today. To the suggestion that he and Candida might get to work on some of the Italian material in the morning he came back with,
‘But if you want her to have driving lessons she really ought to start at once. I thought if we went into Retley after breakfast she could begin right away. There’s no time like the present. I spoke to Fox about it this morning.’
Candida had a bewildered feeling. She looked at Miss Olivia, and received a slight wintry smile.
‘I suppose that you do not drive.’
‘No, but-’
She would have liked to say, ‘How on earth do you know?’ but she restrained herself. Only if Candida Benevent and her descendants had been so completely dismissed from the family consciousness, how on earth did her sisters know whether Candida’s grand-daughter could drive or not?
Miss Olivia answered the unspoken question.
‘John Sayle was not a man of any means. His son and daughter were brought up in a very moderate manner. Barbara would certainly not have been in a position to own a car.’
Miss Cara said, ‘Oh, dear no,’ and Miss Olivia resumed,
‘My father would not allow of any communication, but he took steps to inform himself of such events as births and deaths. When he passed away we continued on the same lines. We have thus always been aware of our niece Barbara’s circumstances and whereabouts. Since your parents died young and were in no position to provide for you, your education must have been quite a strain upon her resources. There would have been no money left over for such things as a car.’
‘Oh, none at all,’ said Miss Cara.
Her sister went on as if she had not spoken.
‘But we feel that being able to drive may now be considered a most useful accomplishment. We thought that you would perhaps like to have lessons and qualify for a driving-licence during your visit. We had intended to lead up to the subject, but Derek has forestalled us.’
He laughed ruefully.
‘I’ve put my foot in it again!’
Both ladies beamed at him.
‘You are sometimes too impetuous, dear boy.’
There was a point in Miss Olivia’s speech when there had been a pricking of angry tears behind Candida’s eyes. Never for a single moment had Barbara allowed her to feel herself a burden. They had been happy together – they had been happy. She clenched her hands until the nails ran into the palms.
Miss Olivia went on talking for long enough to let that pricking anger subside. She had always wanted to learn to drive, and the lessons would probably save her life. They would mean going into Retley and getting away from Underhill for at the very least an hour at a time, and with any luck a good bit more than that. If she and Derek were to go off on their own, she thought there might be ways and means of spinning out the time – letters for the post, errands to the shops, morning coffee. She met Derek’s eye and found it sparkling with mischief. Her spirits began to rise. She listened intelligently whilst Miss Olivia told her how Ugo di Benevento fled from Italy in the middle of the seventeenth century, taking with him what had come afterwards to be known as the Benevento Treasure.
‘He had got into some trouble of a political nature – it was so very easy in those days – and the family cast him off in what we have always considered to be an extremely cowardly manner. It may perhaps account for the misfortunes which fell upon them afterwards. As you will no doubt remember, Napoleon in 1806 bestowed what had been the ancient Duchy upon the upstart Talleyrand, with the title of Prince of Benevento. At the fall of Napoleon the province became once more a part of the Papal territories until 1860, when it was united to the kingdom of Italy. Our ancestor was well received over here. He married an heiress of the name of Anne Coghill and built this house. There have been alterations and additions of course. This room was, for instance, extended and greatly improved during the eighteenth century. In the generations since Ugo there have been many advantageous marriages. The Italian ending to the name was dropped, and Benevents have married into some of the noblest families in England. My father’s indignation at Candida’s mésalliance arose from this fact. John Sayle’s father was, I believe, a mere yeoman farmer. That his son took orders can hardly be said to excuse her.’
Candida resigned herself. The great-aunts existed in the past – useless to try and disinter them. She really felt a good deal prouder of the yeoman farmer than of Ugo who had run away with the family jewels and married an heiress, but it was no use saying so.
Miss Olivia continued to rehearse the births, marriages, and deaths of the Benevents, with Miss Cara nodding assent and occasionally putting in a word or two. It all felt very stiff and unreal, but in a sort of way it was interesting, like those stiff medieval pictures which it was so hard to relate to the living, breathing human beings who had sat for them. They had had real joys and sorrows, and hopes and fears. They had lost people whom they loved. They had lost their hearts, their heads, their lives. They had fought and conquered, or fought and been defeated. There was a kind of fascination about making them come alive and be real again. Her mood changed insensibly. After all, these were her people too – she ought to know something about them. Her eyes brightened and her colour rose.
Derek Burdon watched her with genuine admiration. She might have been a pale, flabby girl with dead-fish eyes, or one of those skinny little things with bones instead of curves. Whatever she had been, he would have had to follow her round and amuse her. As it was, his luck was in.
The discourse on the Benevent family went on and on.
Chapter Four
Candida went up to bed that night with the feeling that it wasn’t going to be so bad. The evening meal had been formally served by Joseph in a cavernous dining-room from whose gloomy walls dark family portraits frowned upon the scene. But the meal itself was beautifully cooked – a soup, a fish soufflé, a sweet. And then the white drawing-room again.
It appeared that Derek had a pleasant voice and a light touch upon the piano, a lordly grand in a cream enamelled case. Candida found herself diverted to that end of the room, asked if she knew this or that, persuaded to join her own voice in a light duet. The Miss Benevents beamed approval and the evening passed very pleasantly.
When she got up to her room there was a girl there putting a hot water-bottle in the bed, rather pretty with a dark lively look. Candida had a friendly smile.
‘Oh, thank you. Are you Nella?’
There was a slight toss of the head.
‘Well, that’s just Auntie – her fancy Italian way of saying Nellie.’ The accent and the laugh were authentic cockney. ‘It riles me a bit, but what’s the use?’
‘Your name is really Nellie?’
‘That’s right. My old Gran that I don’t remember, she came over with Auntie about the year one, and she married an Irishman, and my Mum who was their daughter, she married a Scotchman called Brown, and they lived in Bermondsey, so how much of the Italiano have I got? Proper Londoner, that’s what I am – born there and brought up there and don’t want to be anything different! It’s no good saying that sort of thing to Auntie – she don’t understand. Only how she can go on year in, year out in a nasty dark country hole like this’ – she gave an expressive shrug – ‘well, it passes me!’