Eva Ibbotson - The Secret Countess

Rupert waited, willing him to go on. ‘She sounds a very enterprising child,’ he said.

‘Oh, she was, she was,’ the old man continued. ‘A most unusual child. Not pretty exactly but… it was difficult to leave a room that she was in. Her parents thought the world of her, of course. I remember her mother going out to a charity gala one evening. She was wearing the diamond tiara that Alexander the Second bought for the Princess Dolgoruky — and a necklace of sunflower seeds! Anna had made it for her, so she wore it to the tsar’s box at the Maryinsky!’ He paused, shaking his bald head. ‘I’ve often wondered what happened to them. There were rumours that they’d lost everything — robbed by their old wet nurse, I’ve heard. She was an incredible woman — used to wear the finger of some Georgian saint round her neck; nasty looking thing. Her people came from a cave village near the Turkish border; there must have been dreadful poverty there. I suppose the temptation was just too much for her.’

‘None of the Grazinsky jewels have reached the European market, then?’ asked Rupert.

‘None, my lord, you can be sure of that.’

‘And if they did?’

‘If they did, I fancy you could buy an English county with what they’d fetch. And now to business. In my view you’d do best to consider the Bogdanin parure. The stones are a little pale, perhaps, but magnificently cut and the price is not at all unreasonable. If you would care to come with me to the strongroom…’

Muriel had stayed behind at Fortman’s. As an engaged woman within four weeks of marriage, she considered it perfectly seemly to dispense with a chaperone and the thought of making good the deficiencies of her trousseau without the clucking of Mrs Finch-Heron was most agreeable.

Even Fortman’s, however, was not immune to change. Walking into what had once been ‘lingerie’, Muriel found that the great store had embarked on a new venture: a pet department. An area had been separated off with a trellis and where once there had been calming displays of crêpe de Chine cami-knickers and négligés of guipure lace, there was now a circle of cages with silver bars. Inside, there tumbled litters of soft puppies, clusters of kittens, a bush baby with stricken eyes. There were fish tanks with darting, thumb-sized fish; crocodile-skin dog leads hung from a rack, woven poodle baskets lined with velvet were stacked on the floor…

Muriel frowned. Fortman’s was her favourite store and the intrusion of livestock into what had once been a sanctuary of bust bodices and suspender belts displeased her.

She was about to turn away when she saw, standing by a sanded aviary full of brightly coloured parrots, a man whose back seemed familiar. Tall, broad-shouldered, with springing, straw-coloured hair…

She approached.

‘Dr Lightbody?’

Ronald Lightbody turned.

‘Miss Hardwicke!’ His pale eyes gleamed — and indeed Muriel, in peach satin, flushed from the heat of the store, was a sight to make any eugenecist rejoice. ‘I had supposed you to be down in the country, preparing for your wedding.’

Muriel smiled with unaccustomed warmth. ‘I am, really. I just came up for the day to try on my wedding dress.’ She looked at him enquiringly. ‘You are not considering purchasing a parrot?’

‘Not a parrot, no.’ And, following his gaze, Muriel saw that what the doctor had been rapturously contemplating was not a parrot but a bird, pinioned and heavily chained to an iron bar — a fierce and yellow-eyed predator with a death-dealing beak.

‘It’s a golden eagle,’ explained the doctor, and realized suddenly that he could confide in this beautiful woman as he could never confide in his wife. ‘There is a Persian who lectures on the need for inner harmony. He has the hall on Thursdays and Saturdays and he always comes on to the platform with a falcon perched on his shoulder. The effect,’ said the doctor bitterly, ‘is considerable.’

‘I see. So you thought an eagle…?’

‘Not for my own sake,’ said Dr Lightbody. ‘Ostentation is anathema to me as you know. But for the sake of the Cause…’

As he had expected, Muriel understood. Side by side, Master and Disciple stood and gazed at the eagle and each saw the same vision — the doctor striding on to the stage with the King of Birds sitting lightly on his shoulder. It was a fine vision. To Muriel’s practical mind, however, certain considerations presented themselves. Delicately, she voiced them.

‘Yes,’ he said, sighing. ‘You’re right, of course. And Doreen is so uncooperative.’

‘How is your wife?’

‘Don’t ask, Miss Hardwicke. She seems to be incapable of making any effort at all. Some mornings she simply doesn’t get out of bed. It is wrong to complain, I know, but sometimes I feel so terribly alone.’

Muriel was deeply moved. She knew of the vision which had sustained the doctor ever since he had realized that his name was no coincidence — that in his body there really was a light, a shining image of perfection which could save the world. And to help him, to succour him, he had only a low-born slut.

She laid a plump, kid-gloved hand on his arm. ‘Dr Lightbody, I’m just going up to the restaurant for luncheon. I have an account here. If you would care to join me…? I am unchaperoned,’ she dropped her eyes demurely, ‘but with you I know I will be perfectly safe. And to tell you the truth, I too have troubles.’

Dr Lightbody’s eyes lit up. A free lunch! With a last regretful look at the eagle, he gave his arm to Muriel.

They ascended in the lift and settled themselves in the restaurant, which abounded in nodding, feathered toques and swelling, net-encrusted bosoms. A pianist played soft ragtime; daylight had been excluded by silken drapes and replaced by pink-shaded lamps. It was an atmosphere for intimacy and confidences.

‘And how do you find your future home, Miss Hardwicke?’ enquired the doctor when they had ordered.

Muriel took a sip of Vichy water and dabbed at her mouth. ‘It’s very beautiful. Quite, quite lovely. Only I had expected — perhaps it was foolish of me — far higher standards… a much greater formality and propriety. Perhaps it was unreasonable of me?’

‘No! No! How could it be unreasonable to want the highest and the best? In what way does Mersham fall short?’

Muriel sprinkled salt over her haddock mousse. ‘It is not easy to be specific, but both morally and hygienically there is… a kind of laxness which I had not expected.’

Dr Lightbody leant forward. The discussion of hygienic and moral laxness with a beautiful woman in a softly shaded restaurant was exactly to his taste.

‘Can you give me examples?’

‘Well, take the servant problem. A house, after all, is judged by its staff. And at Mersham there is a most appalling and totally senile old woman who has been given a cottage in the stable block, not two hundred yards from the house. She throws things, Dr Lightbody! And my fiancé seems to find this perfectly natural. Indeed, he seems to enjoy it.’

Dr Lightbody made noises of sympathy.

‘I can give you so many examples… I’ve discovered that they knowingly employ a mental defective in the kitchen; the girl can’t even speak, I understand. And even in the family itself…’ She flushed. ‘Rupert’s old uncle… I have seen it with my own eyes. He actually… handles the maids!’

Hungry for details, Dr Lightbody laid down his fork but Muriel was off on another track. ‘I could give you a hundred instances… Rupert has this great dog who is allowed everywhere, even into the bedrooms.’ She shuddered. ‘And even socially… They entertain Israelites of a kind that would not have been permitted over my father’s doorsteps.’ She lifted her blue eyes to his face. ‘You see why I am distressed?’

Dr Lightbody reached across to take her hand, thought better of it and took, instead, the Sauce Tartare.

‘Indeed I do.’

But he saw, in fact, a great deal more. Ever since Miss Hardwicke had invited him down for the wedding, the conviction had been growing in him that this was his chance. To found an institute in one of England’s most famous houses, to spread the doctrine of the new eugenics free from the endless financial anxieties that had hitherto pursued him — here, clearly lay his destiny. He had seen pictures of Mersham — the library, for example, would make a perfect lecture theatre.

That was if Miss Hardwicke really had, as she seemed to, the upper hand…

‘Don’t you see, my dear young lady,’ he said now, ‘you have a task. A mission. You have been singled out!’

‘Yes, I know. And of course I shall act. After the wedding I mean to—’

‘After the wedding?’ said the doctor. ‘My dear, I beg of you, don’t wait, don’t procrastinate! Remember you are acting in the best interests of these unfortunate people. Take the lady with senile dementia. There is a paper by Schuster and Filemann which shows conclusively that the old are better off with others like themselves, protected from stresses and strains which they can no longer endure.’

Muriel nodded. ‘It is certainly what one always feels when confronted with such people,’ she said, remembering the broken flowerpot, the appendix in its glass.

‘And the defective kitchen girl… What if she should get herself into trouble, as girls of that kind are so apt to do? Another deformed human being brought into the world. Would you ever forgive yourself?’

‘No, indeed. You are right; you are perfectly right. You have helped me so much.’ She smiled up at him and this time the doctor did permit himself a quick squeeze of the soft, plump hand.

‘It is hard, I know,’ he said. ‘All reformers must endure opposition and calumny. I myself…’ He sighed.

‘I know, I know… You must forgive me,’ said Muriel. ‘I’m afraid I’m not quite myself this morning. You see there is this little girl who is to be a bridesmaid…’

She launched into a description of the morning’s events.

Dr Lightbody was shocked. ‘You have been abominably treated. You mean you had no idea that the child was so severely handicapped?’

‘None at all. Rupert just kept saying how pretty she was, how sweet.’

The doctor’s blond eyebrows met together in a frown. ‘To have a conspiracy of silence on such a topic is gross dishonesty indeed. Still, if as you say, your fiancé is so fond of the child, tact and diplomacy will be needed. Let me see…’

Two hours later, the doctor let himself into his flat. He was in the best of spirits. Though he regretted the eagle, Miss Hardwicke had been right. Dagos and foreigners could risk an accident, but not he. And Miss Hardwicke had extended her invitation not only to the wedding but to the house party for the ball which preceded it. If only Doreen wasn’t so unpresentable. He supposed he’d have to take her along, but the embarrassment would be almost unendurable.

‘Doreen?’ he called now.

There was no answer. Instead, his landlady came puffing upstairs, her fat, powdered face full of self-importance.

‘She ’ain’t ’ere. They bin and took her away in an ambulance.’

‘An ambulance?’

‘Aye. She bin coughin’ somethink ’orrible — well, you know how poorly she was. But she would go out and go and get you a pork chop for your tea and in the butcher she ’ad this turn. Blood comin’ out of her mouth an’ all. So they sent for an ambulance and they took her away. In the Samaritan she is, on Edgware Road.’

Dr Lightbody stared at her. He caught himself wondering what had happened to the chop.

‘How terrible!’ he said. ‘How absolutely terrible!’

Rupert returned from London nursing a single and obstinately held idea. Anna must go. She must go now, immediately, before the wedding. She must be given the four weeks’ wages she would still have earned and be sent back to London. He was simply not prepared to have coal carried to his study by a girl whose brother had cut his teeth on the Crown of Kazan. The thing was intolerable and in any case Anna herself, as he now saw, had been a disruptive force ever since she came to Mersham. Once Anna went, reasoned Rupert with impeccable logic, everything would be all right. He would stop having nightmares, Uncle Sebastien would stop playing Stravinsky, Potter would sell the mare. Above all, Muriel, his chosen bride, would be loved and appreciated as she deserved to be.

He began, therefore, by tackling his mother.

The dowager was in her boudoir, dealing with some last-minute wedding invitations. There were dark circles under her fine, grey eyes and rather more chiffon scarves than usual seemed to have slipped from her shoulders to the floor.