The Shifting Fog (32 page)

‘I don’t employ Germans in my factory,’ Frederick said.

‘There’s your first mistake. You won’t find a more diligent race. Humourless, I’ll grant you, but meticulous.’

‘I’m quite happy with my local men.’

‘Your nationalism is admirable, Frederick. But not, surely, at the expense of business?’

‘My son was killed by a German bullet,’ Mr Frederick said, fingers spread, light but taut, on the table rim.

The remark was a vacuum into which all bonhomie was drawn. Mr Hamilton caught my gaze and motioned Myra and me to create a diversion by collecting the main plates. We were halfway around the table when Teddy cleared his throat and said, ‘Our deepest sympathies, Lord Ashbury. We had heard about your son. About David. Word at White’s, he was a good man.’

‘Boy.’

‘What’s that?’

‘My son was a boy.’

‘Yes,’ Teddy corrected himself. ‘A fine boy.’

Estella reached a plump hand across the table, rested it limply on Mr Frederick’s wrist. ‘I don’t know how you bear it, Frederick. I can’t think what I’d do if I lost my Teddy. I thank God every day he decided to fight the war from home. He and his political friends.’

Her helpless gaze flitted to her husband who had the decency to look at least a little discomfited. ‘We’re in their debt,’ he said. ‘Young men like your David made the ultimate sacrifice. It’s up to us to prove they didn’t die in vain. To thrive in business and return this great land to her rightful standing.’

Mr Frederick’s pale eyes fixed on Simion and for the first time I perceived a flicker of distaste. ‘Indeed.’

I loaded the plates into the dumb waiter and pulled the rope to send them down, then leaned into the cavity, listening to see whether Alfred’s voice was amongst the distant strains below. Hoping he was back from wherever it was he’d run to in such a hurry. Through the shaft came the distant jiggling of removal, the drone of Katie and reprimand of Mrs Townsend. Finally, with a jerk, the ropes began to move and the dumb waiter returned, loaded with fruit, blancmange and butterscotch sauce, sans cork.

Conversation had remained on business. I was surprised. According to Myra, ‘shop talk’ was always off limits at table, reserved for the men, if they must, to discuss after dinner. Simion, however, was not one to loosen his grip on a topic he wished to pursue.

‘Business today,’ he said, straightening authoritatively, ‘is all about economies of scale. The more you produce, the more you can afford to produce.’

Mr Frederick nodded. If the flouting of convention disturbed him, it was quickly overshadowed by his habitual eagerness to
discuss his factory. ‘I’ve got some fine workers. Indeed, they’re fine men. If we train the others—’

‘Waste of time. Waste of money.’ Simion thumped an open hand on the table with a vehemence that made me jump, almost spilling the butterscotch sauce I was ladling into his bowl. ‘Motorisation! That’s the way of the future.’

‘Assembly lines?’

Simion winked. ‘Speed up the slow men, slow down the fast.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t sell enough to warrant assembly lines,’ Mr Frederick said. ‘There are only so many people in Britain can afford my cars.’

‘Precisely my point,’ Simion said. Enthusiasm and liquor had combined to bring a crimson sheen to his face. ‘Assembly lines lower prices. You’ll sell more.’

‘Assembly lines won’t lower the price of parts,’ Mr Frederick said.

‘Use different parts.’

‘I use the best.’

Mr Luxton erupted into a fit of laughter from which it seemed he wouldn’t emerge. ‘I like you, Frederick,’ he said finally. ‘You’re an idealist. A
perfectionist
.’ The latter was spoken with the exultant self-gratification of a foreigner who had correctly plucked an unfamiliar word from memory. ‘But Frederick,’ he leaned forward seriously, elbows on the table, and pointed a fat finger at his host, ‘do you want to make cars, or do you want to make money?’

Mr Frederick blinked. ‘I’m not sure I—’

‘I believe my father is suggesting you have a choice,’ came Teddy’s measured interruption. He had heretofore been following the exchange with reserved interest but now said, almost apologetically, ‘There are two markets for your automobiles. The discerning few who can afford the best—’

‘Or the seething sprawl of aspirational middle-class consumers out there,’ Simion broke in. ‘Your factory; your decision. We’re just a minority interest.’ He leaned back, loosened a button on his dinner jacket, exhaled gladly. ‘But I know which I’d be aiming for.’

‘The middle class,’ Mr Frederick said, frowning faintly, as if realising for the first time that such a group existed outside doctrines of social theory.

‘The middle class,’ Simion said. ‘They’re untapped, and God help us their ranks are growing. If we don’t find ways to take their money from them, they’ll find ways to take ours from us.’ He shook his head. ‘As if the workers weren’t problem enough.’

Frederick frowned, unsure.

‘Unions,’ Simion said with a snarl. ‘Murderers of business. They won’t rest until they’ve seized the means of production and put us all out of action. Especially small businesses like yours.’

‘Father paints a vivid picture,’ Teddy said with a diffident smile.

‘I call things as I see them,’ Simion said.

‘And you?’ Frederick said to Teddy. ‘You don’t see unions as a threat?’

‘I believe they can be accommodated.’

‘Rubbish.’ Simion rolled a swig of dessert wine round his mouth, swallowed. ‘Teddy’s a moderate,’ he said dismissively.

‘Father please, I’m a Tory—’

‘With funny ideas.’

‘I merely propose we listen to all sides—’

‘He’ll learn in time,’ said Simion, shaking his head at Mr Frederick. ‘Once he’s had his fingers bitten by those he’s fool enough to feed.’

He set down his glass and resumed the lecture. ‘I don’t think you realise how vulnerable you are, Frederick. If something unforeseen should happen. I was talking with Ford the other day, Henry Ford—’ He broke off, whether for ethical or oratorical reasons, I couldn’t tell, and motioned me to bring an ashtray. ‘Let’s just say, in this economic climate you need to steer your business into profitable waters. And fast.’ His eyes flickered. ‘Now I know you say you don’t want to sell me a larger share, but if things should go the way of Russia—and there are certain indications—only a healthy profit margin will protect you.’ He took a cigar from the silver box offered him by Mr Hamilton. ‘And you’ve got to have yourself protected, don’t you? You and your lovely girls. If you don’t look after them, who will?’ He smiled at Hannah and Emmeline then added, as if an afterthought, ‘Not to mention this grand house of yours. How long did you say it had been in the family?’

‘I didn’t,’ Mr Frederick said, and if his voice contained a note of misgiving, he managed quickly to dissolve it. ‘Three hundred years.’

‘Well,’ Estella purred on cue, ‘isn’t that something? I
adore
the history in England. You old families are so intriguing. It’s one of my favourite pastimes, reading about you all.’

Intriguing. Like a painting, I thought. Or a dusty old book. Valuable as a curiosity, but without real function.

‘I wonder if we girls might retire to the drawing room while the men continue their talk of business,’ Estella said. ‘You can tell me all about the history of the Ashbury line.’

Hannah coached her expression into one of polite acquiescence, but not before I saw her impatience. She was at the mercy of her warring selves, longing to stay and hear more, yet recognising her duty as hostess to retire the ladies to the drawing room and await the men.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course. Though I’m afraid there’s not much we can tell that you won’t find in
Debrett
.’

The men stood. Simion took Hannah’s hand as Mr Frederick assisted Estella. Simion registered Hannah’s youthful figure, his face unable to conceal its coarse approval. He kissed the top of her hand with wet lips. To her credit she concealed her distaste. She followed Estella and Emmeline to the door and, as she neared the door, her gaze swept sideways and met mine. In an instant, her grown-up façade dissolved as she poked her tongue out at me and rolled her eyes, before disappearing from the room.

As the men retook their seats and resumed their talk of business, Mr Hamilton appeared at my shoulder.

‘You may go now, Grace,’ he whispered. ‘Myra and I will finish up here.’ He looked at me. ‘And do find Alfred. We can’t have one of the Master’s guests look out the window and see a servant roaming the grounds.’

Standing on the stone platform at the top of the rear stairs, I scanned the dark beyond. The moon cast a white glow, painting the grass silver and making skeletons of the briars that clung to the arbour. The scattered rosebushes, glorious by day, revealed themselves by night an awkward collection of lonely, bony old ladies.

Finally, on the far stone staircase, I saw a dark shape that couldn’t be accounted for by any of the garden’s vegetation.

I steeled myself and slipped into the night.

With each step, the wind blew colder, meaner.

I reached the top step and stood for a moment beside him, but Alfred gave no sign that he was aware of my presence.

‘Mr Hamilton sent me,’ I said cautiously. ‘You needn’t think I’m following you.’

There was no answer.

‘And you needn’t ignore me. If you don’t want to come in just tell me and I’ll go.’

He continued to gaze into the tall trees of the Long Walk.

‘Alfred!’ My voice cracked with the cold.

‘You all think I’m the same Alfred as went away,’ he said softly. ‘Folks seem to recognise me so I must look close enough to the same, but in every other respect I am a different chap, Gracie.’

I was taken aback. I had been prepared for another attack, angry entreaties to leave him alone. His voice dropped to a whisper and I had to crouch right by to hear. His bottom lip trembled, whether from the cold or something other, I wasn’t sure. ‘I see them, Grace. Not so bad in the day, but all the night, I see them and I hear them. In the drawing room, the kitchen, the village street. They call my name. But when I turn around … they’re not … they’re all …’

I sat down. The frosty night had turned the grey-stone steps to ice and through my skirt and drawers my legs grew numb.

‘It’s so cold,’ I said. ‘Come inside and I’ll make you a cup of cocoa.’

He gave no acknowledgement, continued to stare into the darkness.

‘Alfred?’ My fingertips brushed his hand and on impulse I spread my fingers over his.

‘Don’t.’ He recoiled as if struck and I knotted my hands together on my lap. My cold cheeks burned as if they’d been slapped.

‘Don’t,’ he whispered.

His eyes were clenched shut and I watched his face, wondered what it was he saw on his blackened eyeballs that made them race so frantically beneath his moon-bleached lids.

Then he turned to face me and I drew breath. It was a trick of the night, surely, but his eyes were as none I had ever looked into. Deep, dark holes that were somehow empty. He stared at me with his unseeing eyes and it seemed that he looked for something. An answer to a question he had not asked. His voice was low. ‘I thought that once I got back …’ His words floated into the night unfinished. ‘I so wanted to see you … The doctors said if I kept busy …’ There was a tight sound in his throat. A click.

The armour of his face collapsed, crumbled like a paper bag, and he began to cry. Both hands leapt to his face in a futile attempt at obfuscation. ‘No, oh no … Don’t look … please Gracie, please …’ He cried into his hands. ‘I’m such a coward—’

‘You’re not a coward,’ I said firmly.

‘Why can’t I get it out of my head? I just want it out of my head.’ He hit his palms against his temples with a ferocity that alarmed me.

‘Alfred! Stop it.’ I tried to grab his hands but he wouldn’t let them leave his face. I waited; watching as his body shook, cursing my ineptitude. Finally, he seemed to calm some. ‘Tell me what it is you see,’ I said.

He turned to me but he did not speak, and I glimpsed for a moment how I must appear to him. The yawning gulf between his experience and mine. And I knew then that there would be no telling me what he saw. I understood somehow that certain images, certain sounds, could not be shared and could not be lost. Would play out on the one man’s mind until, little by little, they recessed deeper into the folds of memory and could, for a time, be forgotten.

So I didn’t ask again. I laid my hand on the far side of his face and gently guided his head to my shoulder. Sat very still as his body shuddered next to mine.

And like that, together, we sat on the stair.

A SUITABLE HUSBAND

Hannah and Teddy were married on the first Saturday of March, 1919. It was a pretty wedding at the little church on the Riverton estate. The Luxtons would have preferred London so that more of the very important people they knew from business could have come, but Mr Frederick was insistent and he’d suffered so many blows in the months preceding that no one had much spirit for arguing. So it was. She was married from the small church in the valley, just as her grandparents and her parents had been before her.

It rained––many children, said Mrs Townsend; weeping past lovers, whispered Myra—and the wedding photographs were stained with black umbrellas. Later, when Hannah and Teddy were living in the townhouse in Grosvenor Square, a photograph sat upon the morning-room writing desk. The six of them in a line: Hannah and Teddy at centre, Simion and Estella beaming on one side, Mr Frederick and Emmeline blank-faced on the other.

You are surprised. For how could such a thing have come to pass? Hannah was so set against marriage, so full of other ambitions. And Teddy: sensible, kindly even, but certainly not the man to sweep a young woman like Hannah off her feet …

But it was not so complicated really. Such things rarely are. It was a simple case of stars aligning. Those that didn’t being nudged into place.

The morning after the dinner party, the Luxtons left for London. They had business engagements, and we all presumed—if indeed we gave it any thought at all—that it was the last we would ever see of them.