Prodigies Read online

  Harriet struggled to take all this in. ‘You mean that, as a young man, he was a spy?’

  ‘Perhaps not only as a young man. It was odd that, as soon as he arrived in Demerara, he was at once taken under the wing of the English Governor. And, as you know, soon after that he was granted British citizenship. That was something rarely granted to a Dutchman at that time.’

  ‘So he might have been working for the British?’

  John shrugged. ‘ Who knows? For the British, the Dutch, the Prussians? For all of them or two of them at the same time? He was an extraordinary man. With him – anything is possible.’ John knew that he was not an extraordinary man himself, in fact a totally ordinary one, apart from his knack for making money. Again he leaned forward in his chair, bony, chilblained hands clasped. Like his father, perhaps in unconscious emulation of him, he too had a forked beard. But his was sparse and straggly, as though, even in that respect, he lacked his father’s luxuriant energy. He unclasped his hands, raised one and stroked the beard repeatedly. ‘All those journeys of his,’ he said, ruminating as much to himself as to her. It was only as he was clutching the rail of the bucking and heaving boat, the upthrown spume salt on his lips and sometimes almost blinding him, that a possibility had come to him. ‘Were they all really necessary? Not for the business, I’m sure. Perhaps, as a side-line, he was still doing that same sort of work.’

  ‘But he didn’t need the money!’

  ‘No. Of course not. But people who do that kind of work rarely do it for money. It becomes a habit. And he loved power. You know that, of course you know that. And to deceive people is to have a kind of power over them. And he loved secrets. That was why he never told anyone – even you or my mother or William or me – anything that he didn’t feel that we had to know.’

  A plump hand to her forehead, Harriet was thinking. She nodded. ‘He had an odd way of just – just disappearing for two or three days at a time. He would give me no explanation – except to say that he had to be somewhere on business. And if I tried to make him be more precise, he’d say something like, ‘‘Oh, I shall be travelling about France’’, or ‘‘I have to be in Amsterdam and Antwerp and one or two other places’’. Often he didn’t take either Hans or his valet with him.’

  ‘Well, there you are!’

  But where was she? She did not know.

  Dressing for dinner, after the lawyers had departed, Irene suddenly twisted away from the maid who was doing up some buttons and told her: ‘All right! That’s enough. I can manage on my own.’

  ‘Are you sure, ma’am?’ The girl too had been violently seasick on the packet and even now, five days later, had still not fully recovered. When she walked, the floor seemed to tilt from side to side and then to rear up before her. She was not in the least sorry to be told that she could go.

  ‘Of course I’m sure!’ Then, relenting, Irene asked: ‘Are they looking after you all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes, ma’am. Thank you.’

  Irene nodded. The question had not really been necessary. For all her faults, Harriet certainly knew how to run a household.

  Her dress still half unbuttoned, Irene picked up a hairbrush and, without using it, went to the door separating the bedroom from the dressing-room. John, already dressed but not wishing to disturb her, was once more looking through the copy of the will and its codicil left with him by the lawyer.

  ‘What are you doing? Reading those things isn’t going to change them.’

  Patiently he said: ‘Of course not. But such a will is a long and complex document. Inevitably. I want to be sure of everything.’

  ‘There’s one thing you can be sure of already. That little minx is going to get most of the estate.’

  ‘A large part of it. But we’re not going to be left exactly penniless.’

  ‘What made him add that codicil – so late in the day, just before he was murdered?’ Her tongue moving restlessly over her lips, she crossed to the chair facing his and sank down on to it. She pressed a hand to a bosom pushed upwards and out by the constriction of her stays. ‘My heart is horribly unsteady. Racing one moment, then feeling as though it were about to stop.’

  ‘You had that ghastly journey.’

  ‘And now this shock. What made him do it? What came into his head?’

  ‘Perhaps he loved Alexine more than William and me. Why not? Anyway, it’s useless to speculate. William and I have the business – and a handsome legacy each. I’m not complaining.’

  ‘It’s only because you’re so weak that you’re not. You ought to complain.’

  ‘Who to? What would be the point?’ He drew his gold repeater watch – a twenty-first birthday present from his father – out of his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it. ‘You’d better finish getting dressed. We’ll be late for dinner.’

  ‘I haven’t any appetite. I couldn’t eat a thing.’

  ‘Well, you’d better come down anyway.’

  ‘Oh, all right! Anything to oblige! But I hate the idea of sitting there while those two women gloat over us.’

  ‘Harriet isn’t the sort of person to gloat. Addy might,’ he added with a small smile. He had always secretly envied and even admired Addy’s candour and her willingness to show herself in an unfavourable light if an occasion demanded.

  ‘You’ll have to help with this dress.’

  ‘Isn’t Barbara helping you?’

  Laying claim to a kindness that she had not in fact shown, Irene said: ‘The poor little thing looked so peaky that I told her I could manage without her.’

  ‘You’re always so good to them all. I hope they appreciate it.’

  Was he being sarcastic? As so often, she could not be sure.

  Nanny Rose was seated before the smoking fire in night-dress and slippers, in the long, low-ceilinged room, next to the now empty nursery, which served as both her bedroom and sitting-room. Harriet had offered her the nursery when Alexine had moved out of it into the room, next to her father’s, that she still occupied, but Nanny Rose had replied in that grumpy, ungracious manner of hers, even though she was secretly touched: ‘Oh, no, that’s not necessary. Not at all. What I should like is a really comfortable chair.’ It was in this really comfortable chair that she was now slumped, her darning held up close to eyes that were becoming increasingly myopic.

  The knock startled her. Once again Alexine had been allowed to stay up far too late, because she had pleaded to be allowed to finish a drawing of Sammy. It could only be she. But, in fact, to her surprise, it turned out to be Irene. Nanny Rose staggered to her feet, the half-darned black woollen stocking trailing from a hand.

  ‘Oh, Nanny, forgive me for disturbing you like this. But I wanted a little chat before we leave tomorrow. It’s an early start, you know.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’ Nanny Rose made no effort to conceal her displeasure at being disturbed at an hour so late for her, if not for the rest of the household. She pointed to the chair that she had just vacated. ‘Would you care to sit down, madam?’

  Irene sat. ‘This is a very comfortable chair,’ she said in surprise. ‘And a pretty one. Very pretty.’ It was the sort of chair that she would not in least object to having in her own drawing-room.

  ‘Yes, madam kindly let me have it. It used to be in the breakfast room. No one ever used it.’

  ‘What I really wanted to know – are you still happy here?’

  ‘Happy, madam?’ She repeated the word as though it were a foreign one, stressing it unnaturally.

  ‘I mean – now that Alexine is – what? – almost nine, there can’t be all that much for you to do for her.’ Nanny Rose did not answer. Now seated on another, upright chair, she had resumed her darning. ‘Is there?’

  ‘Oh, I hope I still make myself useful to madam. And to Miss Addy and Miss Alexine too, of course.’

  ‘She’s a funny girl,’ Irene said. ‘But everyone seems to think her someone quite out of the ordinary. Well, I suppose she’s talented – with her drawing and her gift for languages
and so on.’ Her tongue moved over her lower lip as she fingered the cameo, of John’s dead mother, at the low vee of her dress. ‘What I really wanted to ask you is – have you ever thought about a move back to England?’

  Nanny Rose considered, head on one side. Then she raised her darning and snapped the black woollen thread with her teeth. ‘I can’t really say I have. No, that hasn’t really entered my head.’

  ‘I ask for a reason. It struck me that you might be homesick for the Wirral. I mean, you can’t have many friends here, it must be rather lonely for you. And then there are your children – two, is it?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Yes, three. Of course, of course. And the grandchildren. Don’t you miss them?’

  Head again tilted to one side, Nanny Rose once more considered. Then she replied: ‘Sometimes. But I’m sure they manage very well without me.’ It was only rarely – although she would never have confessed that to anyone – that they wrote to her. On her last birthday, only the youngest of her children had remembered to send her greetings – and those were perfunctory.

  ‘If you did want to return, then I have an idea. My daughter – the older daughter, I think you met her that time you came for your’ – she almost said ‘interview’ – ‘ came for our little chat.’

  ‘Yes, I remember her,’ Nanny Rose said laconically, thinking, ‘That one really gave herself airs.’

  ‘Well, she needs a nanny now. The one she had was not really – not really all that satisfactory. She had a – a problem.’ Nanny Rose could decipher the code: the nanny, like many of her kind, drank. ‘ So I thought – she and I thought – that perhaps …’

  Nanny Rose said nothing, as she picked up another stocking to darn.

  ‘What would you think about returning to England with us – now – yes, now – why not now? – in order to work for her? Yes? She’d be a generous employer. And that house of theirs – it has the most beautiful nursery, overlooking the garden.’

  Nanny Rose lowered the stocking to her knee. ‘Thank you, madam. It’s very kind of you to think of me. But …’ She shrugged. ‘I’m too old a dog to change my ways. I’ve been here a long time and … and …’ She could not bring herself to say, ‘I’m happy here’, although that was the truth. To say that she was happy was something that she had been unable to do even on her wedding day. ‘I think I’ll stay,’ she concluded. ‘As long as I’m wanted. Yes, that’s what I plan to do.’

  ‘Well, there it is! No harm in trying. If you should change your mind …’ Irene fumbled in her bag and brought out a card. ‘I gave you my card, I think, all that long time ago. I don’t imagine you still have it …’

  She held out the card and reluctantly Nanny Rose took it and, without glancing at it, placed it on the table beside her.

  With a rustle of black bombazine, Irene got to her feet. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you,’ she said. Before, her tone had been wooingly sweet; now it was vinegary. ‘ It was just an idea.’

  ‘I’m sure I’m very grateful, madam.’

  ‘Well, goodnight, Nanny. I don’t know whether I’ll see you so early tomorrow morning or not. In case I don’t see you, I’ll say goodbye now.’

  ‘Goodbye, madam.’

  When the door had closed, Nanny Rose pulled a face and reached out for the heavily embossed card. She looked down at it, frowning. Then with a ‘Tsk’, she began to tear it into fragments.

  After they had waved goodbye to Irene and John and had then watched the carriage wheel out through the high wrought-iron gates, Harriet and Addy re-entered the house.

  Harriet sighed and slipped an arm through Addy’s.

  ‘He’s a decent sort,’ she said.

  Addy laughed. ‘And she’s a horror.’

  ‘You must have made that clear to her.’

  ‘Did I? I thought I was being extremely polite.’

  ‘Too polite.’

  Again both of them laughed.

  ‘I feel I can trust him,’ Harriet said. ‘ I’m glad that Philip made him one of the three trustees.’ The other trustees were William and Philip’s lawyer.

  ‘Galling for him.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Galling only for her. Yes, I trust him. He’ll do his best by my little girl.’

  In this confidence Harriet was not mistaken. John handled Alexine’s money so well that before her majority she had become the richest woman in the Netherlands. Harriet often used to wonder whether, if she had been in charge of it, she would have done as well.

  Chapter Ten

  AS SOON AS THE GUESTS HAD GONE, Harriet at once set about burning, unread, the personal letters that, always kept apart from Philip’s business ones, lay compressed together in a number of cardboard and wooden boxes up in the loft above the stables. Hans and Philip’s valet, Jean, carried the boxes out to a far corner of the garden, and she then joined them out there, in a black pelisse trimmed with sable, which she had gone out with Addy to buy expressly for her mourning. Despite the protests of the two men, she stooped and took up damp armfuls of the letters, many of them tied into bundles with a dark-blue tape, and then hurled them down into the devouring flames. From time to time she would make out a phrase or even a sentence. One bundle, curling up at the edges, contained, she suddenly realized, letters that she herself had written in her small, neat, schoolgirlish hand. Another, added to the flames by Jean, contained letters from her father. She made no attempt to rescue either.

  Later, she would say to Addy, ‘I felt as if I were burning the past’.

  ‘That must have been horrible for you.’

  Harriet shook her head. ‘No, not at all. I felt as if I were opening a window that I’d always thought to be locked.’

  Alexine, followed by Sammy, wandered out, alerted both by the blue smoke wavering up in the still winter air, and a persistent, acrid smell of burning. ‘Do you want us to help?’

  ‘No. No, thank you. I have Jean and Hans, as you see.’

  Alexine and Sammy remained standing just beyond the fire. Neither was wearing a coat, but neither, in that icy air, felt cold, since the glare of the fire gave them an illusion of the warmth that they could not feel in reality at that distance from it.

  ‘Go back into the house, chérie! We don’t want you to catch another cold. Go! Go!’

  ‘Oh, please, Mama, please!’

  ‘No! Go! Now, now!’

  Pulling a face, Alexine turned and began to trail back to the house. Sammy, dragging his feet over the frost-hard ground, followed after her.

  There was a white heart to the fire and, when the last bundle of letters had been emptied on to it, Harriet stared into that heart. She felt the tears pricking at her eyes, and her throat began to ache with them. But no tears fell.

  Later, she, Hans and Jean went up to Philip’s bedroom and began to turn out his drawers and cupboards. Harriet marvelled at the size and variety of her husband’s wardrobe. She knew that, like herself, he was extravagant about clothes. But such an accumulation of shirts, suits, cravats, overcoats, gloves …

  She crossed over to Hans, as he spread another armful of clothes over the armful already lying on the bed. ‘ Have what you want. Anything.’

  He was taken aback. ‘But, madam, don’t you want to keep …?’ He shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘What would be the point? He’s not going to come back. And these things will never be of any use to me or my daughter. Or to my sister.’

  ‘You could sell them, madam. I know of someone …’ The someone of whom he knew was an aunt, who carried on a sporadic, rarely profitable trade in used clothes, when not occupied with looking after an invalid husband and a large and demanding brood of children.

  ‘Sell them?’ At once, as she said the two words, he realized the enormity of what he had suggested to a woman of her wealth and class. ‘ Oh, I shouldn’t dream of doing that. Go on, take what you want.’ She turned to the valet. ‘And you too, Jean. The rest we can give away.’

  Hesitantly, first Hans and then
Jean began to pick out things – a shirt, some breeches, some stockings, a stock, a riding-crop. Then, emboldened, no longer aware that, with the trace of a melancholy smile, Harriet was watching them from a chair in a far corner of the room, they became more and more acquisitive.

  ‘Do you want that?’ Hans asked.

  ‘Well, only if you don’t.’

  ‘It would go so well with the shirt.’

  ‘All right. Go ahead. In that case perhaps I can have this suit. It’s just my style. I can’t do with anything too bright.’

  Jean gathered up the suit, bending stiffly because he favoured tight-waisted trousers, and then, having deposited it on the ottoman covered with the clothes that were now to be his, gave a lady-like, self-congratulatory sniff, knuckle of delicate forefinger raised to a nostril.

  ‘I like this.’ Hans held a cravat up to his neck. ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘Suits you. Yes. I’d go for that.’

  At first embarrassed and therefore keeping their voices almost to a whisper, they were now talking as though Harriet were no longer with them.

  ‘I don’t think much of those boots. Most of his boots are real quality stuff. Made in England. But this pair … I’d guess they were made here. Anyway, I’ll take them.’ Hans was raking them not for himself to wear but for his aunt to sell.

  ‘They’ll be too big for you. You’ll see. The master had big feet. Look at these socks. Look at their size.’

  When the plunder had been divided up between the two men and their discards put on one side, eventually to be distributed among the numerous charities supported over the years by the family, Harriet told Hans that he could borrow as many of Philip’s valises that he needed to pack up his share. Jean helped him in this task, fastidiously folding each garment before Hans placed it in one of the three valises. The valet, with his vast quiff of upbrushed red hair above a pale, narrow face, took pleasure in the task, familiar to him from the years of repeatedly packing for Philip, and was skilful and amazingly quick at it.