young married friends whose conversations were indescribably boring to Charlotte. Emily’s friends were little better; all romantic speculation, fashion, who was, or was about to be, courting whom. Most of Mama’s friends were stiff, a little too consciously righteous, but there were at least two who were given to reminiscences which Charlotte loved to hear-memories of old admirers, perished long since in the Crimea, Sebastopol, Balaclava, and the Charge of the Light Brigade, and then memories of the few who came back. And there were stories told with mixed admiration and disapproval of Florence Nightingale, “so unfeminine, but you have to admire her courage, my dear! Not a lady, but an Englishwoman one might reasonably be proud of!”
And Grandmama’s friends were even more interesting. Not that she liked them, not many of them; they were singularly disagreeable old ladies. But Mrs. Selby was over eighty, and she could remember the news of Trafalgar, and the death of Lord Nelson, black ribbons in the streets, people weeping, black borders on the newspapers; at least she said she could. She spoke frequently of Waterloo, and the Great Duke, the scandals of the Empress Josephine, the return of Napoleon from Elba, and the hundred days. Most of it she herself had overheard in drawing rooms much like this one, perhaps a little more austere, with less furniture, lighter, neoclassic; it was nevertheless fascinating to Charlotte, a reality sharper than this.
But today was 1881, a world away from such things, with Mr. Disraeli dead, gaslights in the streets, women admitted to degrees in London University! The queen was empress of India and the empire itself stretched to every corner of the earth. Wolfe and the Heights of Abraham, Clive and Hastings in India, Livingstone in Africa, and the Zulu War were all history. The prince consort had been dead of typhus twenty years; Gilbert and Sullivan wrote operas like
Today Mrs. Winchester was here to see Mama-which was a bore-and Aunt Susannah was here to see them all, which was excellent. She was Papa’s younger sister; in fact she was only thirty-six, nineteen years younger than her brother and only ten years older than Sarah; she seemed more like a cousin. It was three months since they had seen her, three months too long. She had been away visiting in Yorkshire.
“You must tell me all about it, my dear.” Mrs. Winchester leaned forward fractionally, curiosity burning in her face. “Who exactly are the Willises? I’m sure you must have told me”-sublime assurance that everybody told her everything! — “but I do find these days that my memory is not nearly as good as I should like.” She waited expectantly, eyebrows raised. Susannah was a subject of permanent interest to her; her comings and goings, and above all any hint of a romance, or better still, of scandal. She possessed all the elements necessary. She had been married at twenty-one to a gentleman of good family, and the year after, in 1866, he had been killed in the Hyde Park Riots, leaving her comfortably provided for, in a well-run establishment of her own, still very young and enormously handsome. She had never married again, although no doubt there had been numerous offers. Opinion veered between the conclusion that she was still mourning her husband and, like the queen, could never recover from the grief, to the reverse conclusion that her marriage had been so acutely painful to her that she could not entertain the thought of a second such venture.
Charlotte believed that the truth lay between, that having satisfied the requirements of family in particular and society at large by marrying once, she now had no desire to commit herself again unless it were for genuine affection-which apparently had not yet occurred.
“Mrs. Willis is a cousin, on my mother’s side,” Susannah replied with a slight smile.
“Indeed, of course,” Mrs. Winchester leaned back. “And what does Mr. Willis do, pray? I’m sure I should be most interested to know.”
“He is a clergyman, in a small village,” Susannah answered dutifully, although her eye caught Charlotte’s momentarily in unspoken amusement.
“Oh.” Mrs. Winchester struggled to hide a certain disappointment. “How very nice. I suppose you were able to be of much assistance in the parish? I expect our own dear vicar would be much encouraged to hear of your activities. And poor Mrs. Abernathy. I’m sure it would take her mind off things, to hear about the country, and the poor.”
Charlotte wondered why either the country or the poor should comfort anyone, least of all Mrs. Abernathy.
“Oh, yes,” her mother encouraged. “That would be an excellent idea.”
“You might take her some preserves,” Grandmama added, nodding her head. “Always nice to receive preserves. Shows people care. And people are not as considerate as they used to be, in my young days. Of course, it’s all this violence, all this crime. It’s bound to change people. And such immodesty: women behaving like men, and wanting all sorts of things that aren’t good for them. We’ll have hens crowing in the farm yard next!”
“Poor Mrs. Abernathy,” Mrs. Winchester agreed, shaking her head.
“Has Mrs. Abernathy been ill?” Susannah enquired.
“Of course!” Grandmama said sharply. “What would you expect, child? That’s what I keep saying to Charlotte.” She gave Charlotte a piercing glance. “You and Charlotte are alike, you know!” That was an accusation aimed at Susannah. “I used to blame Caroline for Charlotte.” She dismissed her daughter-in-law with a wave of her fat little hand. “But I suppose I can hardly blame her for you. You must be the fault of the times. Your father was never strict enough with you, but at least you don’t read those dreadful newspapers that come into this house. I had you too late in life. No good comes of it.”
“I don’t think Charlotte reads the newspapers as much as you fear, Mama,” Susannah defended.
“How many times do you require to read a thing before the damage is done?” Grandmama demanded.
“They are all different, Mama.”
“How do you know?” Grandmama was as quick as a terrier.
Susannah kept her composure with only the faintest colour coming to her face.
“They print the news, Mama; the news must be different from day to day.”
“Nonsense! They print crimes and scandals. Sin has not changed since Our Lord permitted it in the Garden of Eden.”
That seemed to close the conversation. There were several minutes’ silence.
“Do tell us, Aunt Susannah,” Sarah began at last, “is the country in Yorkshire very pretty? I have never been there. Perhaps the Willises would permit Dominic and me. . ” she left the suggestion delicately.
Susannah smiled. “I’m sure they would be delighted. But I hardly imagine Dominic enjoying such a very rural life. He always seemed to me a man of more-cultivated tastes than visiting the poor and attending tea parties.”
“You make it sound terribly dull,” Charlotte said without thinking.
She received a general stare of surprise and disapproval.
“Just the thing poor Mrs. Abernathy needs, I don’t doubt,” Mrs. Winchester said with a sage nod. “Do her the world of good, poor woman.”
“Yorkshire can be uncommonly cold in April,” Susannah said quietly, looking from one to the other of them. “If Mrs. Abernathy has been ill, don’t you think perhaps June or July would be better?”
“Cold has nothing to do with it!” Grandmama snapped. “Bracing. Very healthy.”
“Not if you’ve been ill-”
“Are you contradicting me, Susannah?”
“I am trying to point out, Mama, that Yorkshire in early spring is not an ideal place for someone in a delicate state of health. Far from bracing her, it might well give her pneumonia!”
“It will at least take her mind off things,” Grandmama said firmly.
“Poor dear soul,” Mrs. Winchester added. “To leave here, even for Yorkshire, would surely only be an improvement, change her spirits.”
“What’s wrong with here?” Susannah asked, looking at Mrs. Winchester, then at Charlotte. “I’ve always thought this an unusually pleasant place. We have all the advantages of the city without the oppression of its more crowded areas, or the expense of the most highly fashionable. Our streets are as clean as any, and we are within carriage distance of most that is of interest or enjoyment to see, not to mention our friends.”
Mrs. Winchester swung round to her.
“Of course, you’ve been away!” she said accusingly.
“Only for two months! It surely cannot have changed so much in that time?” The question was ironic, even a little sarcastic.
“How long does it take?” Mrs. Winchester gave a dramatic shudder and closed her eyes. “Oh! Poor Mrs. Abernathy. How can she bear to think of it? No wonder the poor soul is afraid to go to sleep.”
