1841
Henry let her wait. The porter came up to tell him that Mrs Kinsburg waited for him below, and he left her there. He wondered whether she would ask again, or whether she would remain standing beneath the dome decorated with the chequerboard pattern, with her eyes upturned, looking for him.
He had sent Charles off with Polly on some useless errand. He wanted neither of them seeing this. As he set off down the stairs, having waited long minutes, there was a moment when, on the wide staircase of white marble, carpeted in scarlet, he thought he might fall, he felt unsteady. He turned the corner, and paused on one of the flights, and there she was. The porter had left her alone. Just there, where he thought she would be: dead centre, looking up, her hands gloved, her gown of amethyst-coloured shot silk, which changed to pink when she moved, like a gemstone in the light. She looked different; of course she would, even his fervent memory could not be faithful to her. She looked smaller, paler, and thinner. Her skin was no longer the sheer white of girlish purity, but the dead white of inferior marble. He thought this with a sneer; he fancied it even affected the line of his mouth, and he stood a little straighter.
‘Mrs Kinsburg,’ he said, and bowed, two steps above her.
‘Mr Dale-Collingwood.’ Her voice was that low alto and it pierced him in a way that seeing her there had not. His sneer fell from him like broken armour. He did not want to hear that voice. It was a voice which turned back time. And it was her true voice; not that girlish concoction which she had used on that ball night long ago.
‘It is an honour to welcome you here. But where is your maid? She should not feel intimidated, you know. She is welcome to view the Club too.’
She coloured. ‘She is in my carriage. She feels unwell today.’
‘But Katie was always such a strong girl.’
‘It is not Katie. Not any longer.’
He paused, on the brink of further enquiry. Curiosity ravaged him, and he suddenly realized how thirsty he was for information of her. This past year repressed questions about her had run like lines of scripture behind his thoughts. ‘Very well. Please, do follow me.’ He did not offer her his arm. He did not dare to.
‘I will not look up as we walk. The dome made me dizzy.’ There was a hint of a smile on her face.
‘It is an optical illusion. Very small, really; it looks much larger than it is.’ He never told anyone this. Not a single person present on the opening night knew it. Apart from Ashton of course, who had consulted every detail of the plans.
‘Oh.’ She looked disappointed. She kept a yard between them, as they walked up the stairs.
‘I am astonished you have found the time to visit the Club. I did not think you visited London anymore.’
‘I had an appointment with a goldsmith. Do you remember the diamond?’
‘I do not,’ he lied. ‘Forgive me. But look at this.’ He made an expansive gesture as they reached the top of the stairs, towards the balustrade. ‘These columns and pilasters are made of the finest scagliola, painted in imitation of marble, but the Stair Hall itself is clad in slabs of marble from european mines.’ They stood alongside each other. She gripped the balustrade with her small kid-gloved hands, and looked over it. He kept his hands folded before him.
‘I could climb over and jump,’ she said. A faint smile played over her face. ‘A height of this kind tempts one, in a strange way.’
‘Don’t do that.’
She looked at him. ‘Would you care?’
He could not help the sneer again. ‘I’d care about the distress you’d cause the porter. I’d care about the mess they would have to clean up. And what would we tell your husband?’
‘Would it cause you distress?’
‘I am beyond distress.’
Her smile broadened, but he saw its frozen quality, as deliberate as his own expression the night before. ‘The Club has hardened you; you are battle-scarred, like an old soldier.’ She moved away. ‘Is this the Dining Hall?’
He could have taken her by the shoulders and shaken her. ‘Yes.’
‘My husband has told me to look carefully at the stained glass.’
He let her look; he took her compliments. He pointed out the chandeliers and their glass lustres: seventy-two candles in the central ones, forty-eight in each of the corner chandeliers. He had watched them flare the night before, the light transforming the room, and bringing it to life. And it had tortured him, seeing his creation live, while he felt so dead inside. He did not say that to her, of course. They moved through the public rooms, talking with the same forced, affected air. He sauntered, hands behind his back, but his eyes caught every detail of her hair, her face, her eyes. She removed her gloves, and he saw a new ring on her finger, the large red-domed stone, framed with diamonds, a gift from her husband he presumed. He did not point out the mirrors, the infinity he had designed.
They walked to the Red Parlour. ‘Designed for the ladies,’ he said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, ‘in a more delicate, feminine style – French rococo.’
She looked around, as though some mistake had been made. ‘But this is a copy.’
‘Of your private salon at Redlands?’ He walked ahead of her, so she could not see his face. He felt a mingled sense of triumph and desolation. ‘Yes.’
‘Did my husband order this?’
‘No. He allowed me my head on this room.’
She frowned, openly puzzled, but he did not address it. Then she went to the window and looked out.
‘So, you have seen the main rooms,’ he said. ‘The News Room is undergoing some final decoration. Don’t allow me to keep you, Mrs Kinsburg. I’m sure you have many important affairs to attend to.’
She spoke without turning towards him. ‘I’m not sure I’ve seen the real building at all. I’m sure it has many things you haven’t shown me.’
‘I’ve shown you the public rooms, the rooms which ladies wish to see.’
‘Do you hate me, Henry?’
He could have struck her; his breath caught in his throat, and he suddenly felt the tension in his neck and shoulders, he was as stiff as a guard on parade. The truth fell from him without effort or judgement. ‘Yes,’ he said.
She turned and looked at him, unblinking. He saw her strength, he saw that he had not created it, and he hated it.
‘You want to see the real building?’ he said. And he seized her wrist and pulled her through the Red Parlour and out onto the north landing, talking all the time. He named the amount he paid for the excavators; how the Club was built on a plinth of granite from quarries in Derbyshire; of concealed lamps, and plasterwork. He took her through the back of the Dining Hall, through the kitchens, and he talked of the range, the stewing stoves, the boiler for vegetables, the fittings of the confectionary. He took her into one of the service lifts, and pulled the iron grille across. She followed him without a word, although he felt the weight of her as he dragged her, and it satisfied him. He was a gentle man, and yet, perversely, he hoped he was hurting her.
Out of the lift, he took her through a privy, to a small wooden door, which he unlocked and pulled her through. ‘Keep your head down,’ he said. She did, but struggled to fit her dress through, and he held her close to him and half-lifted her down.
He closed the door behind them, and released her wrist. They stood in near-darkness, in a passageway which stretched on around the perimeter of the building. Further down, light streamed through a glazed grille.
‘What is this place?’ she said.
‘It’s called the moat.’
She smiled, and looked around her. ‘What is it for?’
‘It’s a passage dug to protect the building from damp,’ he said impatiently. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘What do you mean, Mr Dale-Collingwood? When, exactly?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Charlotte!’ he cried. He turned, and rubbed his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. Your wrist. Dragging you down here.’
‘You didn’t hurt me,’ she said, her voice soft and low.
The things he had wanted to say to her crowded in upon him. ‘Was there a child?’ he said. ‘That has haunted me. The idea that there was a child.’
He saw her lips part, the shock in her eyes. ‘Oh, Henry,’ she said. ‘No. There was no child.’
But I have felt its hands on my shoulders in my sleep, he thought. I have felt the knowledge of it pulling me back. Now that he knew it was his imagination only, he did not know whether to weep or be glad. His body sagged. They stood, listening to the sound of feet on the pavements above, and watching the way the light changed as people walked over the glazed grille. The moat smelt of earth, of damp and ruin.
‘I have missed you,’ he said. ‘I have loved you all this time. And you have taken everything from me, even my pride.’
‘Do not say such a thing,’ she said. She did not take a step towards him, and yet he saw the sorrow in her face, and heard it in her voice. ‘This is not you speaking, Henry. I know who you are. I know you to be strong, and good, and made, yes, made, to be content. I left to give you that, to allow you to be free of me, and to let you have a happy life. I came here today to celebrate your achievement, not to grieve you.’
‘I don’t believe that you know why you came here,’ he said. ‘I fancy it is to see whether you still have power over me. And now I have given you your answer.’
She shook her head. He turned away, and rubbed his eyes again, eyes that were red and sore.
‘I did not think you would still feel things so deeply,’ she said.
‘Why? In God’s name, after everything, why would you think that?’
‘I have thought it for a long time. Ever since I left London,’ she said. ‘The day after I spent the evening with you, at your house, someone visited me, a maid called Foi. She was desperate. She had already visited the Club site, when the committee were meeting. You did not attend that day – you were unwell, I believe.’
He felt fear then, a terrible realization. ‘I did not wish to be there. I slept late, that day. I did not wish to be with anyone – only to remember that night with you.’
‘In any event, they had turned her away.’
He rubbed his eyes. He had seen Foi a handful of times after their night together. And she had always been the same: cheeky, but slightly distant. No hint of deeper thought or action. Then she had gone, to another post, he had been told.
‘How did she find you? Or even know you?’
‘Henry, dear, our servants know everything. Surely you’ve noticed that.’ She said it sadly.
‘What did she say to you?’ he said. The words came out only with effort.
‘That you had spent the night together. That you were kind to her. That she thought she might be expecting a child – no, do not worry, she did not have a child, not in the end. Of course, I was angry. I wept. But after she had gone, I sat, and thought, and I realized how unfair I was being.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘I already knew that we could never be together. I saw then that you already had a life, not the kind of half-life I lived, but a life with possibility, and action, and a hundred different characters within it. I saw that I was one small part of the richest of lives. And instead of causing you unhappiness, or poisoning it, I could just let you live it. I hoped you would understand. It was wrong of me, perhaps, not to leave a letter or an explanation, but I admit I was stung too. It was spiteful of me. I could justify it to myself a hundred times, but it was wrong.’
‘It was wrong,’ he said. ‘If you had only trusted me, just a little – I wish I could have told you what that night with her was really about. I am sorry, so sorry, that you had to hear it from her. It seems impossible to explain now.’
‘Then do not.’
‘How could you have left, without a word?’
‘I reasoned. It was the accident that brought us together, Henry. The accident – your grief. Without them, you would not have loved me. I kept your letters, though. I could not bring myself to destroy them.’
‘And I yours. But now – I will give them back to you, if you will accept them.’
She gave a brief nod.
He leaned against the wall. They looked at each other, the only noise the footsteps above, the sound of the city’s continuing life.
‘Why did you bring me here?’ she said, after some moments. When he looked back he saw that she was trying to smile. ‘Is this your favourite part of the building? Some plain and useful part that you would like me to see?’
‘No. I prefer the public rooms.’
‘Oh.’ He saw her mystification. It seemed to her, he saw, that they still did not know each other. That a thing she had thought was certain, was not: absence did that, allowing the lover to spin threads into the gaps, but one thread off meant that the picture was not perfect, always uncorrected, a small fault growing into a large misunderstanding or misrepresentation. ‘And why do you like the public rooms so much? Is it the glitter, the splendour? Are you more gaudy than I thought, Mr Dale-Collingwood?’
He breathed the thin air in the earthy darkness. ‘No. How little you know me, Mrs Kinsburg. You see nothing.’
She sighed. ‘I am trying to be your friend. We were always friends, were we not? But if you wish to insult me, I must go. My carriage is waiting.’
‘I like the public rooms because they remind me of you. The scagliola columns in the Stair Hall, for example: the blue is matched to the colour of your eyes, captured by my watercolours. The yellow colour, to the dress you wore on my first day at Redlands. To put it in more romantic language, for you, madam: this building is my tribute to you. My heart, and every mark you made upon it.’
He saw the shock on her face. ‘But the design was set, long before you met me, I believed.’
‘The basic design, yes, but I had freedom with the details. Great men on committees do not concern themselves with details – apart from your husband, of course. But I continued on. Did you see the central coat of arms, in the Dining Hall? They allowed me some freedom with it. The motto ribbon is the shade of your bonnet ribbon, and billows just as your ribbon did, on the day we walked to The Birches. The flowers above the pier-glasses, either side, are those in your bouquet on the first day; the exact arrangement. And the graceful lady surmounting the frame – perhaps you noticed her?’
‘I did not.’
‘You and everyone else, it seems. Her face is yours, carved of gilt gesso. The craftsman did not quite capture you, I think, from my sketch, but still a trace of you is there. The lover’s knots. Did you not see them? I expect the crowd to notice only the general effect, but you, when it is done for you, I thought you might see those knots. They are everywhere, Charlotte. The building is smothered in them. The faces in the Committee Room, gilded on a bronze ground, those faces—’
‘The faces are half-turned away. You showed them to me, just now – I did not like them.’
‘You did not look at them properly.’ His frustration showed in his voice. ‘Your son’s face. Do you remember I sketched him? And the mottoes—’
‘Henry—’
‘There are many members of the Club who have coats of arms, you know. But I selected the mottoes which were used. Mostly they are chosen only for you. Do you know my favourite? Ad finem spero.’
‘I don’t know what that means, Henry. Ladies are not taught Latin. Surely you know that.’ Her voice was higher, a little unsteady.
‘You would have been a fine scholar. I hope to the last. Or I did, Charlotte. I did. You began all of this. And now,’ he turned about him, in the dark corridor, the light level low, ‘completur. Surely you know what that means?’ He looked at her face, stubborn, ungiving, in the shadows, and smiled sarcastically.
‘I can guess.’
‘Allow me to translate. It is finished.’
She stared at him. He felt something shift between them. For the first time, he saw anger in her face. ‘Do you think you are the only one who has known suffering?’ she said. ‘Do you think I am so easily pinned down, like a butterfly with a pin through my heart? You are like Ashton. Creating a beautiful illusion. He chose me because he saw something other in me. He saw that I was strong, that there was something in me which he did not have, which he wanted to own – to pin down, as you have tried to do. But he has never truly owned me. And neither do you.’
*
The maid in Charlotte’s carriage grumbled after ten minutes; moaned after half an hour, sticking her head out of the window to chide the driver; and was incandescent after an hour and a quarter. It was then that she went to the porter of the Mirrormakers’ Club and asked what was keeping her mistress. But a preliminary search of the public rooms found no mistress, and no architect either.
‘Don’t worry, miss,’ said the porter. ‘It’s a huge place, they’ll be rattling around like two dried peas in a jar, but there’s no way they’ve been lost. I’ll turn the night-glass over and set off to look for them. If I’m not back by the time the sand’s gone through, feel free to write to the director, and ask him to send a search party.’ And he chuckled, and set off up the staircase, with Polly at his heels.
The housekeeper came forwards, smiling soothingly. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea? Miss?’
‘Fointaine. Miss de la Fointaine. And yes, you can.’