MRS JANE CLARK, the highly efficient keeper of the household, supervising a large staff of maids, cooks, gardeners, and stablemen, though Cecilia’s constant companion she remained something of a mystery. What adjectives would Cecilia have chosen to describe her? Loyal, capable, discreet, reticent; though others would have been less charitable: severe, humourless, even malevolent. Though little was known of her past, her references had been excellent, and Cecilia had gradually educed the salient details of her life story: that she was of indeterminate middle age, a widow, the mother of a son and daughter in school in the south of England, that her childhood had been spent unhappily in Liverpool, and that she had lived with her late husband for a number of years in Jamaica. Now that Dr Gully had passed out of Cecilia’s orbit, Mrs Clark occupied an increasingly central place in the life of the vain, self-indulgent, wealthy young widow.
‘Ahh,’ murmured Cecilia, sinking up to her chin in the steaming hot water of her claw-foot bath. She closed her eyes and inhaled the pleasant bouquet of the expensive French bath crystals. Sponging her neck and shoulders, she stirred the surface of the sudsy water with her toes, and said, ‘Read me another poem, Janie.’
‘Very well,’ said Mrs Clark, seated on a stool just outside the tiled enclosure of Cecilia’s bath. She turned to the fly page of the blue volume, an anthology of Elizabethan verse, and glanced at the inscription: To Cecilia with much love, James. ‘Shall I read a sonnet?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Cecilia. ‘The one that begins with … . “sweet silent thought”.’
Locating the poem, Mrs Clark read:
‘When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought
And with old woe new wail my dear time’s waste.’
‘Old woe … new wail,’ said Cecilia. ‘That’s very good.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Clark, ‘Shakespeare was quite clever with words.’
Grasping the sides of the bath, Cecilia lifted herself up and said, ‘Bring me a towel, dear.’
Putting the book aside, Mrs Clark took a thick towel from the rack and handed it to Cecilia who stood dripping on the tiles, her soft skin a healthy pink. She ran the towel over her face, shoulders, and arms, untroubled by nudity before another woman after her weeks of communal bathing at the hydro, and said, ‘There’s nothing more refreshing than a good, hot soak.’
Mrs Clark made no comment, but watched Cecilia with a detached, critical expression. ‘You should eat more, Cissie,’ she said at length. ‘You’re too thin.’
‘I prefer to be thin,’ said Cecilia, dropping the towel on the floor and walking past Mrs Clark into her boudoir. ‘It’s the new fashion. I think I must have some new clothes to match.’ After a few minutes she emerged from her dressing-room, wearing a sleeveless cotton bodice and frilly knickers that reached below her knees, and sat before the mirror. ‘After you’ve done up my hair,’ she said, as she powdered her cheeks, ‘tell the cook I’m ready for breakfast. And then I’m taking the 10.40 into the city.’
In the months since Cecilia had severed her relationship with Gully, her efforts to re-enter polite society had availed her little. Though the gossip surrounding her scandalous affair had died away, and she was no longer treated as a pariah in the village, her mother and father would not consent to see her and she had no friends, apart, of course, from Mrs Clark. Much to Cecilia’s surprise, Gully continued to divide his time between Orwell Lodge, his cottage in Balham, and the hydro, presumably, she considered, in the hope that she would relent and see him again. On one occasion she had passed him on the pavement in town, though he merely tipped his hat as she waved and drove by in the carriage. Living alone in the large house, surrounded by servants, without a single invitation to tea or dinner, or even to meet an acquaintance over lunch, Cecilia grew increasingly withdrawn and melancholy as autumn gave way to the cold, dark, and damp of December and the approach of Christmas and its society balls and dances, where she would be unwelcome. Fearing that Cecilia would fall deeper into despair, and in her despair turn back to Gully, Mrs Clark intruded on her one evening at supper, seated alone at the long dining-room table with a bowl of soup and carafe of wine. ‘May I join you, Cissie?’ she said as she drew back a chair.
‘Of course. Would you care for a glass of Madeira?’ Cecilia summoned a servant with a small silver bell, who promptly returned with another wineglass.
‘Do you recall,’ said Mrs Clark as Cecilia poured each of them a glass of the garnet-coloured wine, ‘that my late husband was employed in Jamaica?’
‘You’ve mentioned it.’
‘He was the supervisor of a large coffee plantation—’
‘Doctor Gully was brought up on a Jamaica coffee plantation,’ interjected Cecilia.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Clark. ‘On one occasion we conversed about our experiences in the colony. At all events, the plantation owner who employed my husband is a wealthy man named Cranbrook. Sir Harry Cranbrook.’ Cecilia sipped her wine and dabbed at her lips with her napkin. ‘I made his acquaintance, of course,’ continued Mrs Clark, ‘and his wife. As one does with fellow Britishers on an island populated by black Africans.’
‘So I imagine,’ said Cecilia, taking a spoonful of soup.
‘The Cranbrooks have a very fine house in London,’ continued Mrs Clark, ‘on Palace Green, in Kensington.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Cecilia. ‘On Palace Green? Very fine indeed.’
‘Yes,’ added Mrs Clark with a smile. ‘And Sir Harry has a stepson by the name of Charles, a barrister in the Temple, whom I’m told is very well bred and quite handsome.’
‘I see,’ said Cecilia, helping herself to more Madeira.
‘A young man of your age,’ said Mrs Clark. ‘And a bachelor. With your permission,’ she concluded, ‘I can arrange a social call on the Cranbrooks. I should like you to meet them.’
‘You’re such a dear, Janie,’ said Cecilia, running a finger nervously along the edge of the soutache on her sleeve. ‘Of course you have my permission.’
After the hectic social calendar of the Christmas season, Mrs Clark’s efforts to arrange a visit to the Cranbrook home finally met with success: an invitation to tea, early in the new year. At Victoria Station, the two women shared a hansom cab, passing along the streets of Belgravia and Knightsbridge to Kensington Road on a clear, cold January day. With a fur over their laps, Cecilia pointed out familiar sights along their route: the imposing town house she’d once shared with Captain Castello, the art gallery on the Brompton Road where she’d acquired her Gainsborough, and the broad expanse of Hyde Park, blanketed in snow. Turning on Palace Green, they rode past Kensington Palace in a clattering of hoofs on cobblestones and arrived at the imposing Cranbrook mansion punctually at half past three. Before exiting the hansom, Cecilia looked Mrs Clark in the eye and said, ‘I appreciate what you’re trying to do.’ Mrs Clark responded with a thin smile. ‘To help restore my reputation,’ said Cecilia. Mrs Clark nodded.
‘Mind your step, ladies,’ said the driver, opening the door and extending a gloved hand. ‘It’s a bit icy.’
Cecilia stood at the tall iron gate and studied the brick and stone façade of the house, one of the grandest in London, with a flutter in her chest. Mrs Clark held open the gate and escorted Cecilia up the walk to the varnished mahogany door, the bell of which was answered by a butler in a black cutaway and starched bib. Ushering the visitors into a sky-lit entrance hall, crowded with potted ferns and marble statuary, he said, ‘I’ll take those,’ helping Cecilia out of her dark-blue coat with the sable collar. ‘M’lord and M’lady are expecting you in the drawing-room.’
Cecilia had taken care to dress for the occasion, choosing an expensive blue gown from her dressmaker on Bond Street, with flounces at the skirt, an elaborate, diaphanous sash at her slender waist, a double row of buttons in front, long sleeves with white cuffs, and a matching blue hat. With her porcelain complexion, red lips, and auburn curls, the overall impression combined beauty with wealth and high fashion, precisely what she intended. Sir Harry and Lady Cranbrook stood with their backs to the fire blazing in the marble fireplace when Cecilia and Mrs Clark entered the high-ceilinged room, decorated with worn Persian rugs on the parquet floors and an arrangement of oil portraits of the Cranbrook ancestors hanging on the pale-green walls.
‘Come in, come in,’ said Sir Harry cheerfully. As Cecilia walked confidently up to him, he added, ‘My dear Mrs Clark. How good to see you again.’
With a slight bow, Mrs Clark said, ‘Let me introduce Miss Cecilia Henderson. Sir Harry and Lady Cranbrook.’
Extending her hand to Sir Harry, Cecilia said, ‘How do you do.’
‘My goodness, what a beautiful dress,’ remarked Lady Cranbrook, a short, stout woman with greying hair and rouged cheeks who Cecilia judged to be in her fifties.
‘Why, thank you,’ said Cecilia, confident that her clothing was the very best in the room.
‘Let’s sit,’ said Sir Harry, motioning to a grouping of armchairs and a sofa upholstered in pale-blue silk, ‘and I’ll ring for tea.’
Once they were seated, Lady Cranbrook turned to Cecilia and said, ‘Miss Henderson, I understand you live in Balham.’
‘Yes,’ said Cecilia, who sat with her hands folded in her lap, ‘after the death of my husband …’
‘Your husband?’ said Sir Harry.
‘Henderson’s my maiden name. I was married to Richard Castello.’
‘Castello?’ said Sir Harry. ‘Of the international telegraph?’
‘Yes,’ said Cecilia. ‘Richard’s father. And after my husband’s untimely death, I acquired a property in Balham adjoining Tooting Bec Common. It’s country living, really, yet close enough to the city.’
‘And,’ said Sir Harry affably, ‘you have the capable Mrs Clark to manage your affairs. Ah, here’s tea.’ Two servants appeared bearing silver trays, one with a bone china tea service and the other with an assortment of pastries and finger sandwiches, which they carefully lowered to the butler’s tray table in front of the sofa. As the servants poured, Sir Harry, a short, sturdy man with a shiny bald pate, tufts of white hair at his temples, and a ruddy complexion, reminisced with Mrs Clark about their years in Jamaica: ‘… so dreadfully hot and humid … yet exceptionally beautiful … nothing to equal Blue Mountain coffee.’
Putting aside her teacup, Cecilia turned to Sir Harry and said, ‘Do you have family living here with you?’
‘Our daughter Martha is married,’ he said, ‘and lives with her husband in Birmingham, and our boy Charles, a barrister, has rooms in Knightsbridge and, of course, his chambers at Gray’s Inn.’
‘I see,’ said Cecilia, reaching for a scone, which she liberally smeared with clotted cream.
‘But he’s home for a visit,’ said Sir Harry amiably. ‘Tell me, Mrs Clark, are your children well?’
‘William’s in school at Brighton, and Florence – do you remember Florence?’
‘I seem to recall a small sprout of a girl.’
‘Yes, well, she’s all of fourteen now—’
‘My, my.’
‘Away at school in Tunbridge Wells.’
Munching her scone, Cecilia considered Sir Harry’s reference to Charles as ‘our boy’, deducing he regarded him as an adopted son.
‘I understand that your father,’ said Lady Cranbrook between bites of a cucumber sandwich, ‘has an estate in Oxfordshire?’
‘Yes,’ said Cecilia. ‘Buscot Park. My parents divide their time between the country and their house in Belgravia.’
‘More tea, miss?’ asked a servant.
‘Please.’ At the sound of footfalls, Cecilia turned toward the hallway just as a young man strode into the room.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said. ‘Just searching for my dashed tobacco.’
‘Come in, Charles,’ said Sir Harry, ‘and meet our guests.’
Charles Cranbrook, a 30-year-old man-about-town with sandy brown hair and neatly trimmed side-whiskers wearing a dark-brown jacket and charcoal trousers with boots polished to a high gloss, walked up to Cecilia, bowed at the waist, and said, ‘How do you do.’
With a pretty smile, Cecilia said, ‘Very well, thank you. I’m Cecilia Henderson and this is my estate manager, Mrs Jane Clark.’
‘Whose late husband,’ interjected Sir Harry, ‘managed one of our plantations in Jamaica.’
Turning to Mrs Clark, Charles smiled and said, ‘I seem to recall Mrs Clark.’
‘Ahem,’ said one of the servants, standing inconspicuously beside a marble-top table against the wall. ‘I believe this is the master’s tobacco.’
‘Why, thank you, my good man,’ said Charles, walking over to accept a leather pouch. Turning to Cecilia, he said, ‘I’m afraid I must be going, but I’m delighted to have made your acquaintance.’ He paused, looking for a moment in her eyes. ‘Goodbye, Mother,’ he concluded, and then walked briskly from the room.
‘Youth,’ commented Sir Harry.
Goodbye, said Cecilia inwardly, retaining a mental image of Charles’s interesting, if not especially handsome face.
Putting her teacup aside, Mrs Clark turned to Sir Harry and said, ‘We, too, must be going, before it grows dark.’
‘Are you staying over in the city?’
‘No,’ said Cecilia as she rose from her chair. ‘Returning to The Priory, my house in Balham.’
‘I hope we shall see you again before long,’ said Lady Cranbrook.
‘You’re very kind,’ said Cecilia. ‘Nothing would please me more.’
‘Do you have a coach?’ asked Sir Harry.
‘We instructed our driver to wait,’ replied Mrs Clark.
Escorted to the door by their hosts, Cecilia offered her profuse thanks for their hospitality, donned her hat, coat, and gloves, and followed Mrs Clark to the cab waiting at the pavement. With a final wave to the Cranbrooks standing in the doorway, the two women climbed up onto the seat and, with a snap of the whip at the horse’s ears, the hansom was on its way in the fading light of the midwinter afternoon.
‘Well, Cissie,’ said Mrs Clark, seated opposite in the half-empty railway carriage, ‘what did you think?’ Both women had spent most of the thirty-minute trip from Palace Green to Victoria Station in silent introspection, listening to the creaking wheels and hoofbeats as the hansom rolled along in the gathering dusk.
‘Think?’ said Cecilia. ‘Of the Cranbrook mansion? Very grand, even more so than our own house in Belgravia—’
‘No. About Charles. When I last saw him, he was a youth, quite bright but a bit of a cad.’
‘I thought him, well, rather interesting. Not unattractive. Well dressed but not a dandy. I suppose he has money?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mrs Clark. ‘His stepfather certainly has riches. But Charles’ mother – Lady Cranbrook – married Sir Harry when Charles was virtually a grown man. So one doesn’t know.’
Appearing in the swaying doorway, the conductor called out, ‘Next stop, Balham.’
‘All in all,’ said Cecilia with a smile, ‘a very successful outing. And who knows? Perhaps I may see Charles again.’
As Mrs Clark had her own room on the second floor of The Priory, down the passage from Cecilia, took all of her meals there, and led an otherwise parsimonious lifestyle, her savings were sufficient to enrol her son and daughter in mediocre schools in the south of England, where she hoped they would acquire enough of an education and polish to rise above tradesman status. On a clear, mild April morning, Mrs Clark, accompanied by Cecilia, boarded the train at the Balham station en route to Brighton to attend sports day at her son’s school, St Anne’s Asylum for the Children of Distressed Gentlefolk. Sharing a first-class compartment, Cecilia put aside her novel and said, ‘Tell me, Janie, what does one do at a sports day?’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Clark, who for a change was wearing a plumcoloured dress, ‘all the boys are required to participate in athletics – team sports, cricket, rugby, that sort of thing.’ Cecilia nodded. ‘And each term the parents are invited to attend an exhibition. Hence, sports day.’
‘I see. Will we observe a match?’
‘I should think so. William plays on the older boys’ cricket team.’
To Mrs Clark’s mild surprise, Cecilia had never witnessed a cricket match and consequently sat amid the visiting parents, resting her chin on her fists, utterly fascinated yet baffled by the crack of the bat on the bounding ball and dash of the boys to the wickets, invigorated by the salt-laden Channel breeze across the broad, emerald expanse. ‘Look, Cissie,’ said Mrs Clark, pointing, ‘William’s coming up to bat.’ Cecilia watched as a gangly youth, clad in white, strode to the pitch to face the bowler, a tall, muscular boy who with a hop, skip, and windmill motion of his arm, hurled a ball that bounced at the feet of the batsman. ‘Swing, Willie!’ cried Mrs Clark. ‘You can do it!’ On the next toss, William swung clumsily, driving the ball high in the air and deep into the outfield. ‘Run, Willie!’ exhorted his mother, restraining the impulse to leap up from her seat.
As the boy loped to the wicket, Cecilia turned to Mrs Clark with a smile. ‘Jolly well done,’ she said, with a clap of her hands. Heedless of the score, or the innings, or which of the sides had the advantage, Cecilia was content to observe the action and listen to the cheers of the boys and their families until the sun sank low in the western sky and the umpire at last announced that the game was suspended for the evening, to be resumed in the morning. Having met William, a thin, awkward boy with a shock of dark hair, Cecilia advised that she intended to return to the hotel, where they would meet for dinner, while Mrs Clark had the rare opportunity to see her son privately. As the setting sun tinged the horizon with a band of mauve, Cecilia strolled from the school grounds into the seaside town, oppressed by thoughts of Dr Gully and her deepening isolation. ‘Without a friend in the world,’ she muttered to herself, as she approached the old hotel on the promenade, ‘apart from dear Jane.’
Cecilia sat at a banquette facing the bevelled glass doors, observing the men and women, some accompanied by children, who crowded into the hotel lobby, noticing in particular the ladies’ hats, decorated with plumage with absurdly wide brims, resolved that she must have one, or two, just possibly three. At length Mrs Clark appeared, looking wan from the long afternoon, and somewhat gloomy, perhaps due to her simple dress and comparative lack of ornamentation. ‘Over here, Jane,’ said Cecilia, as Mrs Clark walked by.
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Clark. ‘I didn’t see you.’
Cecilia rose and placed a hand on Mrs Clark’s arm. ‘Let’s take a turn on the promenade, shall we?’ she said. ‘I could use a breath of fresh air before dinner.’
After walking arm-in-arm several blocks from the sea-front hotel, the two women halted at the entrance to the long, covered pier, festooned with Japanese lanterns and packed with visitors. ‘The penny arcade,’ said Mrs Clark. ‘Reminds me of my childhood, when my father would give a shilling each to my brother and me to wager.’ Cecilia smiled, thinking back to the lavish entertainments on the grounds at Buscot Park to which she and her sisters had been treated by their over-indulgent parents.
‘Let’s return to the hotel,’ said Cecilia, fighting another wave of melancholy. ‘I’m ready for dinner.’
Strolling past The Crown, a popular public house whose patrons spilled out on the pavement, Mrs Clark almost collided with an impeccably dressed young man. ‘Beg pardon,’ he said as he tipped his silk top hat. ‘Oh,’ he added with a look of surprise, ‘it’s Miss Henderson.’
‘Mr Cranbrook,’ said Cecilia, with a happy smile that dimpled her cheeks. ‘What a coincidence.’
‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘and a happy one at that.’
‘We were just returning to our hotel for dinner,’ said Cecilia. ‘Would you care to join us?’
‘I’d be delighted, as I’m at loose ends this evening.’
Seated across from Cecilia and Mrs Clark, Charles Cranbrook ordered a bottle of claret and then resumed a humorous account of his reason for visiting Brighton. ‘One of the chief disadvantages,’ he said, ‘of being admitted to the Inns of Court, is the requirement to argue cases before our circuit judges. Here, we’re in Quarter Sessions.’ Cecilia nodded politely. ‘Nothing very exciting, I assure you. The usual action for trespass, that sort of thing. Ah, here’s our wine.’ After allowing the waiter to pour each of them a glass, he said, ‘I understand, Mrs Clark, you’re visiting your son in school?’
‘Yes, at St. Anne’s. Today was the boys’ spring sports day.’
‘Ah,’ said Charles after sampling the wine. ‘The sports day with its athletic exhibitions. I always loathed it.’
Smiling pleasantly, Cecilia studied his face; his neatly brushed, light-brown hair, trimmed side-whiskers, penetrating, intelligent eyes and something almost cruel about his mouth. Making eye contact with her, Charles said, ‘Miss Henderson …’
‘Cecilia.’
‘Cecilia, you have no children of your own?’
‘No. My late husband and I were not blessed with children.’
‘Someday,’ said Charles, ‘I intend to have a large brood of them.’
Cecilia sipped her wine, ran a finger along the edge of her decorated cuff, smiled, and said, ‘But first you shall have to find a wife.’