7
Hester hears the sound of the pony and trap on the driveway and her stomach gives a childish little lurch of joy, mixed with something almost like relief. She hurries to the front door and waves as her sister, her niece and her nephew climb down from the cart, and Mr Barker undoes the straps around their luggage and begins to pile it on the ground.
‘Oh, careful with that one, please! It’s rather fragile,’ Amelia cries. Mr Barker clamps his jaw into his moustaches and nods in a surly manner.
‘Darling Amelia! It’s so wonderful to see you! Come here, children, let me look at you,’ Hester calls. She holds the two children at arm’s length: eleven-year-old John, who has sandy hair and a rather pinched-looking face, and is all skin and bone; and eight-year-old Ellie, who is plump and cheerful, with pale grey eyes and a tucked-in chin like a china doll. Her little blue and white sailor dress is tight across a round tummy, and creased from the journey. Just as I would have looked at that age, Hester thinks, with a tug of affection that is almost painful. ‘Goodness me, how you’ve grown! I can scarcely tell it’s you! You’re enormous!’ she exclaims. Ellie smiles but John rolls his eyes a little and looks down, scuffing his feet in embarrassment.
‘John! Don’t make that face! Give your aunt a kiss,’ Amelia instructs him sharply.
‘Oh, there, there.’ Hester crouches down and smiles at them. ‘I’ve never liked forced kisses, only freely given ones. What do you say, John?’ Hester’s nephew leans forwards and kisses her cheek quickly, and Ellie puts out her arms for a hug, which Hester gladly gives her. ‘Run around the garden and stretch your legs, children. Off you go! Come and have some lemonade when you get too hot!’ she calls after them, as they gratefully trot away and are lost amidst the high flower borders and sun-beleaguered shrubs.
‘Oh, thank goodness!’ Amelia sighs, putting down her vanity case and hugging her sister. ‘John has been vile all the way here! It’s not his fault – he’s so disappointed that their father hasn’t come with us…’
‘Yes, where is Archie? Didn’t he mean to come?’
‘He did, until the very last minute. I’m so sorry, Hetty! Typical of him – he had a prior engagement at his club that he hadn’t told me about, and had forgotten about himself. But I am here, and so are the children, and we shall have a wonderful time without him, I’m sure.’ Amelia smiles. She is five years older than Hester, and has a grace and elegance that her younger sister has always envied. Feline cheekbones and a delicate jaw, and the most perfectly blue, almond-shaped eyes. As a débutante, her beauty was the talk of the season, but now there are slight hollows in her cheeks and under her eyes, and her skin has lost the first vibrant glow of her youth.
‘Amy, you look a little tired. Are you quite well?’ Hester asks, solicitously. Amelia’s smile shrinks a little, and to Hester’s shock tears appear in her eyes, sparkling in the sun. ‘Amy! What is it? Whatever’s the matter?’ she demands, grasping her sister’s long-fingered hands.
‘Let’s not talk out here,’ Amelia says, lowering her voice as Cat appears in the hallway behind them. ‘Are we in our usual rooms?’
‘Ah, well… Mr Durrant has taken the room that the children would normally have, I fear… I thought it impolite to uproot him, since he has been with us so many weeks and got so well bedded in…’
‘Yes, so you mentioned,’ Amelia replies, wryly.
‘But Cat has made up the west end bedroom for them – I’m sure they’ll be comfortable in there.’
‘But there must be somebody to help the girl take our luggage up, surely?’ says Amelia, eyeing Cat’s thin arms and shoulders as she hefts one of the trunks, her whole body arching backwards to take the weight of it.
‘I’m quite able to manage, thank you, madam,’ Cat grinds out tersely, scarce able to breathe.
‘Here – let me take that from you,’ Robin Durrant says, appearing in the doorway. He takes the case from Cat, lifting it easily out of her hands and carrying it into the hallway.
‘Oh! Mr Durrant… how kind of you. May I introduce you to my sister, Mrs Amelia Entwhistle? Amy, this is our resident theosophist, Mr Robin Durrant,’ Hester says, trying to keep her tone from betraying her. She isn’t sure what it is she is trying to hide, but lately there is something. There is definitely something. Robin gives Amelia’s hand a gentle shake.
‘Very pleased to meet you, Mrs Entwhistle,’ he says, smiling his widest, most disarming smile; and Amelia can’t help but return the expression.
‘Likewise, I’m sure,’ she says.
‘Well, I’m off to the station, and thence into Reading. I have a few things I must attend to… but I do hope to meet you properly at dinner, Mrs Entwhistle. Is there anything you’d like me to fetch for you while I’m in town, Mrs Canning?’ He turns his smiling eyes on Hester, who finds it hard to meet his gaze.
‘No, thank you, Mr Durrant.’ Her voice is clipped in spite of herself.
‘Then I’ll bid you fine ladies a good day.’ He makes them an ironic little bow and saunters away towards the gate. When he passes out of sight, Amelia turns to her sister and gives her an appraising look.
‘We have much to talk about,’ she says, as they walk into the house. Inside the hall, Cat bends down again, and sets her back to the heavy case for the second time.
The two sisters settle themselves in the shade of a cherry tree on the terrace to the rear of the house, where the slightest of breezes stirs the torpid air. They sit on iron filigree chairs, which are so hot that they glow through their skirts onto the backs of their legs. Amelia wafts air gently over her face with a beautiful silk fan, her gaze instinctively following her children as they weave and skip around the garden, playing with an almost grim determination, their eyes screwed up, brows furrowed.
‘I have never known such heat as this summer!’ she exclaims at last. ‘On my way here just now, we passed a group of children playing in the street, and do you know what they were doing? They were collecting bubbles of melted tar from the road on twigs of straw, and using it as glue to stick the pieces onto the side of a barn, to make letters and pictures! Melted tar, at not ten in the morning!’
‘It is extraordinary. I find it most draining, don’t you?’ Hester agrees.
‘Truly. You didn’t mention in your letters that Mr Durrant was quite so very…’
‘Very what?’
‘So very young and handsome,’ Amelia says, watching her sister closely.
‘I must have said he was young? As for handsome… I hadn’t really noticed, to be perfectly honest. Is he?’ Hester replies, evasively. She feels suddenly self-conscious, as if caught out in a lie.
‘You know he is – don’t play the innocent with me. You have eyes, haven’t you? Or do you only have eyes for Albert?’
‘Perhaps that’s it… Anyway, he’s our guest. Of course I don’t think of him that way. And besides…’ She trails off awkwardly, not quite sure what she had been about to say.
‘Yes?’
‘No, nothing. But tell me, Amy, please – what’s troubling you?’ Hester asks, keen to change the subject. Cat comes over to the table with a tray of iced tea and lemonade, freshly cut oranges and slices of Madeira cake. Cloudy droplets of sweat scatter her brow. Amelia waits until the servant has gone back indoors before she sighs.
‘You must never speak of it to a soul, not even to Albert. Do you promise? Well… the trouble that you have with Albert, dearest… the trouble that you write to me about? I fear I have just the opposite trouble with Archie.’ She touches her fan to her lips as if reluctant to let the words out.