you are his darling.’ It was a statement of fact.
‘I suppose so,’ she said, blushing a little.
‘I don’t think he’d want you to be talking to me. Your mama certainly didn’t.’
The scene at the churchyard came vividly to mind, her mother frosty and unusually forceful. What had that been about? First, she’d been instructed to greet her aunt and uncle, then commanded in no uncertain terms to disappear. She’d been baffled and just a little threatened. That evening as Alice had sat over her needlework, she’d questioned her mother closely, but received no satisfactory reply.
‘I talk to whomever I want,’ she said resolutely, bristling from the memory.
‘Those are brave words.’
‘I am brave,’ and for the moment his presence gave her the strength to believe it. ‘Though not so brave,’ she amended, ‘that I can afford to disappear for hours.’
‘Then you’d better go, and I had better return to work. Mr Simmonds will be back shortly from his quarry visit, and I should at least look industrious.’
She rose to go and, as she did so, he caught hold of her hand; she allowed her palm to rest in his. ‘Will you walk this way again?’ he asked.
‘I might.’
‘Soon?’
‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ she hazarded, and he looked gratified.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, and she sensed his eyes watching as she walked away. There was the slightest tilt to her hips, the cluster of pleats that fringed the silk poplin skirt swinging from side to side.
Joshua was waiting for her at the top of the terrace steps, propped against an enormous urn of sweet-smelling cosmos, their pink and white faces swaying in the slight breeze. It looked as though he had been waiting a long time.
‘Where have you been?’ The beauty of the flowers had done nothing to soothe and his frown was etched deep.
‘Just walking.’ She drew abreast of him but avoided meeting his eyes.
‘You shouldn’t walk alone. You know I am always happy to keep you company. You must ask me. It’s a long time since we walked together.’
‘We’ll walk another day, Papa. And please don’t worry. I took a very small stroll and they are our gardens. How can I come to harm?’
‘They may be our gardens, but still—’
He stopped suddenly. A floating grey skirt had appeared around the corner of the building. Alice had barely reached the top of the terrace steps when he turned on her. ‘Your daughter has been out this last hour. Did you know that? Why are you not with her?’
Alice ignored his outburst. ‘I was with Dr Daniels. If you recall, he is here for William. I came to tell you that the doctor is leaving. You may wish to say goodbye.’
‘Daniels, that old woman,’ he muttered. ‘Both of you fussing over the boy. There’s nothing wrong with him, I tell you. You’re encouraging him to be sick.’
As if to prove him right, William chose that moment to fly out of the side door and down the terrace steps, his brown limbs at full stretch. ‘Sorry,’ he panted, weaving his way between them, but not before Elizabeth had spied a crumpled cloth beneath his arm and what looked suspiciously like half a loaf poking out of it.
‘I have to go. Olly is waiting.’
All three of them looked after the rapidly disappearing figure. It was Alice who broke the silence. ‘I am not saying he is sick, simply that we should continue to be careful.’
‘Rubbish! There’s nothing wrong with him.’
When he appeared about to deliver another lengthy diatribe, Elizabeth seized the chance to slide quietly away and make for the house.
Joshua glared at the spot she had been minutes before. William was supplanted by a more urgent consideration. ‘About Elizabeth…’
Alice sighed inwardly. What about Elizabeth? she asked herself. She seemed unable to exercise control over the girl. Her father should be the one to hold her in check, but his fondness kept him from any meaningful restraint.
‘Surely, woman,’ he was saying, ‘it can’t be beyond your wit to keep watch over her. Keep her amused so that she doesn’t feel the need to stray.’
‘It’s not amusement that Elizabeth needs, Joshua. It’s purpose. A finishing school would have helped,’ she couldn’t stop herself adding.
She waited for the next outburst, but instead he seemed deep in thought, prodding so savagely at the lawn with the briar stick he carried that Alice feared the gardeners would be called on to lay new turf.
‘There are times,’ he said heavily, ‘when I wish we had stayed in Birmingham. Elizabeth would have had purpose there. The women were… different. More serious. The wives and daughters of the men I knew – they would have been her friends. They would have kept her busy, interested in the world. Given her something beyond dabbing at canvases in an attic. And they would have found her the right husband.’
This final shot went over Alice’s head. In her mind, she was back in Birmingham and hating it. Fifteen years she’d lived there, and for the entire time she had felt adrift. The friends, the contacts, Joshua spoke of were industrialists, factory owners like himself. They inhabited a world wholly foreign to her and had wives who were just as foreign. Women who gave gossipy and uncomfortable tea parties or, worse, were terrifyingly intellectual. Joshua had taunted her that she was too great a lady, too conscious of her family name and thought herself above their company. It wasn’t so but she could never have told him the truth. She was scared of the women, thoroughly scared. Her meagre education, the narrow vision with which she’d been raised, the privileged life she’d led, were poor preparation for holding her own with females who thought nothing of conducting literary soirées in their homes or debating the latest philosophy. They were wives who joined the Women’s Slavery Society or attended public meetings on women’s suffrage and urged her to accompany them. They made her feel stupid and pointless.
And Joshua had not helped. He’d been incapable of understanding her plight and treated her with a growing abruptness. Even when she’d given birth after years of disappointment, she had been made to feel a failure. A girl rather than the boy that was expected. In time, of course, things had changed. Joshua had grown to adore his daughter and to dismiss the son when he arrived, as hardly worth his attention. His partiality was understandable. She thought Elizabeth too headstrong for her own good, but the girl’s spirit and energy were a true echo of her father’s.
When her husband had finally gained ownership of his Sussex acres, she’d felt blessed. For weeks, she had sailed aloft on a tumultuous wave of relief. Until she’d returned. Then came the realisation that she’d find no more congenial company in the countryside of her birth. Her brother had made sure that neither Joshua nor she would find a place in county society. The great and the good had decided for themselves that Joshua was unbearably vulgar, but her brother had made sure with a whisper
