essential it was that Kilkeel should not see me, but before I could get the words out, she was demanding my help as usual.
‘Tell me, Elizabeth, you’re clever, how do I get away without them noticing?’
‘If there are a hundred and twenty people coming here for a ball, will anybody notice an elopement?’ I said.
‘But that means waiting until next weekend – a whole week.’
‘Is that so bad?’
‘A lot of things may happen in a week. But I’ll think about it.’ She stood up, rather shakily. ‘Philip says I must write to him at Ascot poste restante. I’ll decide tomorrow, so you must take the letter on Monday morning.’
I thought, Must I? but didn’t argue because I knew I’d go to the stables in any case to send my copies of the lists to Mr Blackstone. Celia was on her way to the door.
‘If anybody sees me and asks what I was doing here, say I brought you a message from my grandmother. I think she approves of you. She keeps asking me questions about you.’
‘What sort of questions?’
But as before, she went without answering.
I finished copying the list and, in the last of the daylight, took the note from Mr Blackstone out from under the blotter and read it.
My dear Miss Lock,
You have done well. Please do your best to communicate with me every day. In particular, be alert for the arrival of a person calling himself Mr Brighton and let me know at once.
On Sunday afternoon I wrote my reply.
Dear Mr Blackstone,
Mr Brighton arrived Saturday, in the company of Lord Kilkeel. He will be staying at least until the dinner and ball next weekend. They were in the family pew in church this morning, but I did not have a clear sight of him because I was sitting in the back pew so as not to be seen by him. I enclose lists of the guests at the dinner and ball, and also of the house guests. I hope you will consider that I have earned the right to ask why you wish to know about Mr Brighton and how it concerns my father’s death. What is Lord Kilkeel’s part in it?
I wrapped it up with the lists and addressed it, wondering why I had not admitted to Blackstone that I had already been considerably closer to Mr Brighton than the length of a church away. One reason was that I distrusted the man and did not see why I should give him more than our bargain. The other and deeper one was that the memory of Mr Brighton’s hands on me in the loosebox made me feel so dirtied that I could not face writing it down for another man to read.
On Sunday afternoon Celia came into the flower garden when Betty and I were there with the children. She’d brought scissors and a trug with her, to cut some sweet peas for her dressing table. When Betty wasn’t looking, she slid a letter out of the trug and into my hands.
‘I’ve taken your advice. I’m telling him to come for me on Saturday.’
When she’d gone, I watched the children and worried. It was wrong that Celia should depend on me for advice in something so important. Until then, the matter of the elopement had been useful to me, but now I felt guilty. Her position at Mandeville Hall might have its disadvantages, but at least she was provided with a permanent roof over her head, a life that connected one day with the next and the company of a mother and a brother who cared for her. Missing all of those, I valued them more than she did and wondered if this Philip were worth the loss and whether she really knew her own mind. I supposed I should have to speak seriously to her but did not look forward to it with any pleasure. Betty said she was happy to look after the children while I went back to my other work. Now that the lists were done, I turned to a stack of forty blank place cards that Mrs Quivering had set out for me. She’d suggested that I leave them till morning, but they gave me the excuse for missing the children’s visit to the drawing room again and a close-quarters encounter with Kilkeel and Brighton. How I’d manage to spin out the excuses for the rest of the week, I couldn’t imagine.
On Monday morning I woke with my eyes still tired from all that penmanship, body stiff and weary after an uneasy night. The thought of being under the same roof as the fat man had kept snatching me back from the edge of sleep. I fumbled in the half dark with the buttons and buckles of my boy’s clothes, hating them for the memory of Mr Brighton’s hands. No ride on Rancie this morning. The delight of that had been lost in what followed it and I had more serious things to do, although how poor Rancie was to be given her exercise was one of the thoughts that had nagged at my brain through the night. I hurried down the back stairs, through the room of the chamber pots and across the courtyard.
When I came to the drive and took the turning for the back road, the clouds in the east were red-rimmed, the sky overcast and rain threatening. About a hundred yards down, to the right of the road, was the big dead oak tree. On the other occasions I’d passed there had been two or three crows sitting on it, but there were none that morning. I don’t know why I noticed that. Perhaps I sensed something, as dogs and horses do. I passed the tree and had my back to it when a voice came from the other side of the trunk.
‘Good morning, Miss Lock’.
A woman’s voice. An elderly voice. Even before I turned round I knew who I’d see, though it was so wildly unlikely that she’d be there in the early hours of the morning. She’d come out from behind the tree and was standing there dressed exactly as she always was, in her black dress and black-and-white widow’s cap, ebony walking cane in her hand. She stood where she was, clearly expecting me to walk towards her. I did.
‘Well, aren’t you going to take off your cap to me?’
Confused, I snatched off my boy’s cap. My face, my whole body felt as red as hot lava while her cool old eyes took in everything about me, from rag-padded high-lows to disorderly hair.
‘I wondered where those clothes had got to,’ she said. ‘Where are you going so early, if I might ask?’
I didn’t answer, conscious of the two letters padding out my pockets and sure she was aware of them too.
‘It’s going to rain,’ she said. You are likely to get wet before you reach the Silver Horseshoe, Miss Lock.’
‘Oh.’
‘So I hope you have those papers well wrapped up. It would be a pity if they were spoilt, after all your careful copying.’
‘Oh.’
I was numb, expecting instant dismissal or even arrest.
‘So you had better hurry, hadn’t you?’ she said.
‘Umm?’
She gave a sliver of a smile at my astonishment.
‘May I ask for whom you are spying? Is it the Prime Minister? I wrote to him and to the Home Secretary. I was afraid that they’d taken no notice of me, but it seems one of them has after all.’ Then, when I didn’t answer. ‘Well, it’s no matter and I’m sure it is your duty not to tell me. I did not know that they used women. Very sensible of them.’
‘You mean …?’
‘Only I must impress on you, and you must pass this on to
