Human Traces Read online

  May laughed, but stopped when Miss Brigstocke caught her eye.

  Sonia turned back into the room, wanting to say something, but managing to control herself. ‘It’s very gloomy in here, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘These dark days,’ said Miss Brigstocke. ‘All the light’s gone off by noon. And I did ask for more lamps. We shall have to wash the plates by candlelight.’

  So much of the room was dark, besides the blackened range; the framed silhouettes on the wall, to either side of it, were black, as were the pots and pans on the open shelf of the dresser; the ceiling was stained by years of dark fumes; but it was not a cheerless room. Sonia had spent many afternoons of childhood sitting at the big deal table, drawing, talking to bad-tempered Mrs Travers, Miss Brigstocke’s predecessor, or Elmley, the last butler, and inhaling the aromas of the range, all of which were exotic to her young senses, whether onions frying, cooked apples, melted cheese or the powerful scent of roasting meat that would come with a roar and hiss when Mrs Travers opened the oven door, and stood up scarlet-faced, flapping her white cloth.

  ‘I must leave you to it, I’m afraid,’ said Sonia. ‘That man’s coming from the village to help. You know. Mr Fisher, the one who came when Papa had to give that dinner.’

  ‘Lord help us,’ said Miss Brigstocke.

  ‘I think we’re supposed to pretend he’s the butler,’ said Sonia, ‘as though he works here all the time.’

  ‘Well, he’ll have to do a better job of knowing where things is kept. And not spill the wine this time.’

  ‘That’s your responsibility, Miss Brigstocke. Don’t let him anywhere near that bottle of Madeira.’

  May giggled as Sonia went out through the far door, down a dim, panelled passage and out into the bright side of the house.

  Though well lit by the tall windows that overlooked the drive, the main hall was cold, and Sonia put some logs on to the mean flame that flickered in the fireplace. A circular table in the middle of the space held a vase of winter blooms in icy water, which she rearranged to look more welcoming.

  What now? She wiped her hands down the front of her dress and looked into the dining room to make sure the places were properly set. May was only fifteen years old and was learning the job as she went along, from what gruff hints she could squeeze from Miss Brigstocke. Sonia straightened a setting on the table. For years she had considered Miss Brigstocke only as she presented herself – a bossy, disappointed servant of the kind you might find in any cold house in Lincolnshire; then one day Sonia had discovered a lascivious and private part of her life, far from regular, involving the lampman, Jenkins, and, she suspected, other men as well.

  As Sonia went back into the hall, the double front doors opened noisily and her father appeared, banging the snow from his hat, then using it to drive a dancing Dalmatian away from him.

  ‘Where is your mother, Sonia? They’ll be here at any minute. Is that what you’re wearing? Never mind. Is Fisher here yet? Get off, Dido!’

  Mr Midwinter went up the front stairs, calling to his wife. A carriage arrived, bringing Edgar and his pale young wife, Lucy. Fisher, the occasional butler, walked up the frosty path through the kitchen garden and let himself in at a back door. May came scurrying through from the kitchen with a message from Miss Brigstocke asking how long she was supposed to wait before sending the lunch through.

  ‘Oh, yes please,’ said Mr Richard Prendergast. ‘A man can’t have too much caper sauce, that’s what I always say. And what’s sauce for the goose . . .’ He looked at Mrs Midwinter, then at Sonia, and winked, as he helped himself from the silver jug that Fisher held at his shoulder.

  ‘Nice bit of mutton, Midwinter,’ said Mr Prendergast the elder, wiping his mouth on a white napkin and settling back in his chair with a glass of claret. ‘Keep your own sheep, do you?’

  ‘There’s a small farm, a house, a few cottages. I let the tenants do what they please. I have too much to do in town to give it much attention.’

  Mrs Prendergast, a tall woman with a high colour who had spoken very little, said, ‘I suppose you have ever such a large staff here.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr and Mrs Midwinter together. She retreated. ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘it’s not as easy to get the servants you want these days, but we have to look after the place. It’s ours in trust, that’s how I see it, to hand on to the next generation. And we have to make sure our daughter’s well cared for, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’ Sonia wondered whether he was implying that she had a maid of her own.

  ‘And has the house been in the family for long?’ said Mrs Prendergast.

  ‘It’s only a hundred years old,’ said Mr Midwinter. ‘Completed in the year of American Independence. There’s a date carved above the door. I’ll show you afterwards, if you like.’

  ‘And do you live in Nottingham itself?’ said Mrs Midwinter, helping herself to sauce. Sonia noticed the way she had saved her husband from having to make any more ancestral claims.

  Mrs Prendergast stretched her long back a little further up in her seat. ‘We have two houses, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Midwinter deflated visibly, but only for a moment. ‘And are they both in the town?’

  ‘No fear!’ said Richard Prendergast. ‘Pater’s a great one for the fresh air. Riding to hounds, all that sort of thing. Pass me a bit more of the wine, will you, Fisher, there’s a good chap.’

  Fisher stiffened, but managed to extend a yellowish, choreatic hand to the decanter on the sideboard and pour another glassful for the guest.

  Richard Prendergast had fair curly hair, some of which he was losing at the temples and from the crown, giving him a half-plucked appearance. He had a small mouth set in red cheeks and blue eyes which moved rapidly from face to face without seeming to take much in.

  ‘Good man, Fisher!’ he said, drinking deep of the claret that Fisher had extracted from the cellar’s furthest bin.

  ‘. . . quite a responsibility,’ Mrs Prendergast was saying, ‘living in the manor house. Do you ask all the villagers in at Christmas?’

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Mrs Midwinter vaguely. ‘So much to do, now Edgar and Lucy are married. And there’s a baby due in the New Year, isn’t there, Lucy?’

  Sonia covered her mouth with her napkin. ‘Manor House!’ she imagined Miss Brigstocke spluttering, ‘I’ll show them the Manor House . . .’

  Edgar Midwinter, a solemn young man of twenty-four, cleared his throat and addressed himself to Richard Prendergast. ‘And are you following your father’s line of business, sir?’

  ‘Me? Good heavens, no! There are enough lace cuffs in the world, don’t you think? No. No, I’m starting a venture with some chums in London. You just can’t go wrong at the moment. Of course, you have to know the right people, that’s what I always say.’

  ‘What sort of business?’ said Mr Midwinter keenly.

  ‘Sugar.’

  ‘And will you just import or—’

  ‘We expect to act as brokers,’ said Richard.

  ‘I see. And do you have your residence in London?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m still lodged with the long-suffering parents. But I intend to move. I have my eye on a place in Mayfair. Just as soon as I can . . .’ He coughed and held his hand in front of his mouth. ‘Make my arrangements.’

  Sonia found Lucy looking at her across the table, her eyes wide with theatrical excitement.

  ‘Mama,’ she said into a silence that had swiftly and uncomfortably fallen on the room, ‘shall I ask May to clear the plates?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Midwinter. ‘Fisher, tell Miss Brigstocke she may send in the dessert.’

  Sonia left the dining room discreetly, squeezing the oak door closed, then ran down the passage to the kitchen.

  ‘Miss Brigstocke!’ she said irrupting into the smoky cavern.

  ‘What’s the matter, Miss Sonia?’

  Sonia sat at the table and put her hand to her head. ‘Nothing.’ She laughed and s
at up. ‘Nothing’s the matter. It’s just rather . . . I wanted to escape. I keep wanting to giggle. I feel someone’s going to make a fool of themselves, and it might be me.’

  ‘What’s he like then?’ said Miss Brigstocke.

  ‘Who?’

  May giggled.

  ‘The young man.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Miss Brigstocke. I’ve come to tell you that you may send through the dessert.’

  ‘Very well, Miss.’

  ‘He’s very . . .’ Sonia put her hand to her mouth. ‘Curly.’

  May snorted.

  ‘And he’s going to move to London, and live in Mayfair.’

  ‘London,’ said Miss Brigstocke sepulchrally, as though it were Gomorrah. ‘Well, well, well. Now then, May, get those jellies from the larder and put the cloth on the tray. Go on.’

  Sonia stood up. ‘I suppose I’d better go back. They liked the mutton, Miss Brigstocke.’

  ‘Good. And the fish? Did Mrs Midwinter like the fish?’

  Sonia stopped in the doorway and looked back, grave in her plum-coloured dress. ‘I was not going to mention the fish, Miss Brigstocke.’

  The flow of conversation at the dining table had divided. Sonia resumed her seat and tried to decide whether she should join her father and Mrs Prendergast, who were talking about the breeding of horses, or save Lucy from Mr Prendergast’s inquiries about her pregnancy.

  The door of the room rattled loudly and swung open to reveal Thomas Midwinter, covered in mud and snow, clutching his left arm in his right, pale, with grey lips and a thin line of blood running down his cheek. He had been in a fight with some boys from the village and lost track of time; he thought he might have broken his arm.

  ‘For heaven’s sakego and get washed,’ said Mrs Midwinter. ‘You can come and join us when you’ve changed. Fisher, see if Miss Brigstocke can keep something hot for him.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Mr Midwinter as the door closed. ‘My younger son. He lives in a world of his own, I’m afraid.’ He spoke without enthusiasm.

  There was a murmur of sympathy.

  ‘But never mind about him. Where were we?’

  It was quite dark by the time Thomas came downstairs and joined the rest of the party in the dining room, where the light from the small fire had been augmented by that of two pewter candelabra that Fisher had set uncertainly on the table. Thomas had dressed himself properly, in a jacket, white necktie and waistcoat, but he looked pale, Sonia noticed, and he used only one hand to eat the plate of mutton that was brought to him.

  Thomas had untidy chestnut hair, and eyes that were the opposite of Richard Prendergast’s: brown, steady and liable to remain fixed for a long time on a single person as though he was making an examination, dispassionate and not necessarily kind. Suddenly, his body might be galvanised by a thought, a spasm of laughter or by the physical turbulence of being sixteen years old, and he would speak fast, fluently, in his recently acquired baritone voice. Then his eyes flashed, no longer still, but often filled with affection, a little for his parents and elder brother, but mostly towards Sonia, to whom his gaze seemed often to return.

  When the meal was finally done, Mrs Midwinter took the women upstairs to her bedroom, while her husband circulated some port among the men.

  ‘In due course,’ said Mr Midwinter, ‘Edgar will take over my business, just as he will inherit the house. After he completed his studies, I sent him away to Canada to learn about grain. He’s going to start working for me next year.’

  Mr Midwinter was the third generation to manage the company of Chas Midwinter & Sons, grain merchants, but he felt sure that the previous two had never had to work so hard. Harvest, yields, transport, markets . . . Nothing was predictable except the fierceness of the competition and the narrowness of his own margins of profit.

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Prendergast. ‘And what about you, young man?’ He turned to Thomas. ‘I suppose it’s the church or the army for you, is it?’ He laughed richly.

  ‘As a matter of fact, he’s very keen on the Bible, aren’t you?’

  ‘I like the stories, Father,’ said Thomas. ‘I like the tales of people lost in the wilderness. But I don’t think that makes me a likely priest.’

  ‘But it’s still the Bible, isn’t it? You spend hours with your nose in it.’

  ‘They are stories, like Homer. I love Homer, too. Or Shakespeare’s plays.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Don’t start on the theatre,’ said Mr Midwinter. ‘Our guests don’t want to hear about all that. Hamlet’s ghost and three witches and heaven knows what.’

  ‘It’s Hamlet’s father’s ghost, in fact, who—’

  ‘He pesters me all the time to let him go to London, to Drury Lane or some such place.’

  Richard Prendergast laughed. ‘I suppose the young fellow wants to meet all the pretty actresses.’

  ‘It’s really only Shakespeare I like,’ said Thomas. ‘He tells you things that he’s discovered, like a great inventor.’

  ‘And there were we,’ said Richard, ‘thinking the play was an evening’s entertainment!’

  Thomas’s eyes grew narrow, but he said nothing.

  ‘I suppose we shall have to send him to the university,’ said Mr Midwinter, ‘like his brother.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Mr Prendergast seemed taken aback.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ repeated Mr Midwinter, as though worried that his guest had not quite understood. ‘The University at Cambridge is the Midwinter tradition now.’

  Prendergast rallied politely. ‘I see. So you will be joining the scholars in their caps and gowns, will you? And what will be your subject?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Thomas. ‘I suppose it depends on whether my father will pay for me to go there.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Mr Midwinter. ‘Fiendish expensive it is.’

  Thomas pushed his plate away, still nursing his left arm. He looked through the French doors over the darkened terrace at the side of the house. Beyond it, at the end of the crazy paving, above the stone gateposts, he could see a handful of low stars.

  ‘If I could choose anything at all to study,’ he said, still looking into the clear winter sky, ‘I suppose it would be Shakespeare and some of the other English poets.’

  The others laughed again. ‘You are a buffoon, Thomas,’ said Edgar. ‘As though the fellows of the College would get together and teach you how to watch a play!’

  Mr Prendergast was purple with mirth. ‘Or read poetry to you!’

  Mr Midwinter was also smiling, though with plain embarrassment. ‘He’s just pulling our leg, aren’t you, Thomas? It’s always been his way.’

  ‘Really,’ said Thomas. ‘They teach us grammar at school, how to read and write. Then they teach us to translate Homer and Euripides. Why should they not teach the depths of literature?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Edgar, ‘you can’t become a Bachelor of Arts in reading novels!’

  ‘I meant poetry. Shakespeare drew a new map of the human mind as clearly as Newton mapped the heavens. Why is one considered science and the other fit only to be mocked with jokes about pretty girls and Drury Lane?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Mr Midwinter, rising from the table. ‘Edgar, go and join the ladies in the morning room. Thomas, you go and make yourself useful. Prendergast, you come with me if you please, sir, and smoke a pipe in my study.’

  There, the two men stood on either side of the fireplace, approximately equal in height, dressed in similar clothes of good but not ostentatious quality, each wary, full of family pride, but willing, all other things being equal, to proceed.

  ‘I like your house, Midwinter. And your family. Mrs Midwinter, a very gracious lady if I may say so.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Mr Midwinter inclined his head. ‘Mrs Prendergast likewise. Do you have other children?’

  ‘Another boy at home. But no girls. No dowries to find.’

  ‘Indeed . . . Indeed not.’

  There was an awkwardness.
‘And your young Thomas. He’s a character, isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, him?’Mr Midwinter waved a hand. ‘He’ll settle down. He’ll study law like his elder brother in the end, I expect. He shall have to find a profession because I expect to have only one heir to my business and my house.’

  ‘He looks a decent lad, your Edgar.’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t ask for better.’ Mr Midwinter took a half step forward, as though he had recovered from the thought of dowries and was now prepared to move cautiously on to the offensive.

  ‘This sugar business,’ he said. ‘Is that likely to flourish?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Mr Prendergast stuck his pipe into his mouth and pulled at his waistcoat with both hands. ‘I’ll make sure the boy’s well set up there. I know a few people in Cheapside who—’

  ‘What? Usurers?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ laughed Prendergast. ‘Useful folk for the boy to know. People who can put business his way.’

  ‘Will he have to travel? He can’t rely on people in coffee houses to do his work for him. And then he’d be away from . . . From home.’

  ‘We’ll not let him come to any harm.’

  ‘Why does he not follow you into the family business? Would that not be more secure for him and his wife?’

  Prendergast set down his pipe on the mantelpiece. ‘Let us talk about this straight,’ he said. ‘I have had a good look at your girl and I like what I have seen.’

  ‘She is an accomplished child. She—’

  ‘I am not saying my Richard could not do better. But I am saying he could do worse.’

  Mr Midwinter made as if to speak, then held back. It was a more delicate business than he had expected because he had no certain idea of how attractive Sonia might appear to a young man. Her figure was slender and womanly, he supposed; her manner was considerate yet lively: but was she beautiful? Did a young stranger see something to enchant him, or merely, as he himself did, the ghosts of the various stages of childhood and adolescence layered up one upon another, almost visible beneath her excitable skin?

  He did not enjoy hearing his daughter discussed by this man as he presumably talked about a bolt of cloth to some Lancashire supplier, but he was obliged to listen; if Prendergast let slip that he or his son considered her attractive, then he might be able to offer a smaller dowry.