‘And you don’t trust him?’

  ‘I need to know people to do that.’

  ‘You know me?’ I asked her.

  ‘You’re a friend.’

  ‘But I’ve come too late. Remember – real friendships go back into the past. You said so yourself.’

  ‘You’re an exception, Catherine.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘Because I’m so foolish? Because I need your protection?’

  ‘“No” to the first. But “yes” to the second.’

  ‘Let’s stop,’ I said, ‘please.’

  ‘Only if you’ll promise not to desert us. Your friends.’

  ‘Nor you me.’

  * * *

  He didn’t always tell me where he went between these re-encounters.

  In a racing phaeton, I heard it said, a young fellow could put himself about over a weekend, travelling anywhere within a hundred-mile radius drawn from the capital.

  He didn’t have anything so fast at his disposal, that I was aware of. But he did have the healthy colour of a man who might well cover a lot of distance; and he certainly had the charm to assure himself of transportation, whether offering to drive a party or being given the use of a carriage for one or two days with an agreed time and place for its return.

  He’d had his own life before I met him. Why should I expect him to account for the time when he was required to earn his own keep and was out of my ken?

  * * *

  I convinced myself that I enjoyed knowing as little about him as I did. I felt I was freer to fill in details from my imagination, when the picture was so sketchy; it gave me a bigger, not lesser, stake in his life, because I had to think myself into it more. And it occurred to me that he must be fully aware of this.

  * * *

  I told Sally things which, as soon as they had tumbled out of me, I realised I shouldn’t have said.

  (Ah! how sweet it is to love.)

  About the jolts of excitement my body received from him; about waking up thinking of him.

  (Ah! how gay is young desire.)

  About dressing to please him, first and foremost. About finding him waiting for me in my dreams.

  It was Sally who would remind me of what I’d said before, quoting my discrepancies back at me.

  I laughed them all away.

  (And what pleasing pain we prove,/ When first we feel a lover’s fire.)

  All the while Sally would be sewing or winding wool, even setting to some item of silverware she’d noticed hadn’t been polished well enough.

  (Pains of love are sweeter far,/ Than all other pleasures are.)

  She was never still now, which made me wonder if she was losing interest a little – or was at the very least guilty, about the time I took up with my stories of Durley and elsewhere, my running narrative about a man I hadn’t even mentioned to my father. But busy as she was, she must have been paying me very close attention, to be able to remember so much the next time about the Chadwycks and – especially – the fugitive figure of ‘my’ Charles Compeyson.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Osbornes had the neighbouring estate, Thurston Park. Lady Chadwyck and the second Lady Osborne weren’t on the best terms, but their children were of an age and quite content with one another’s company. The Osbornes had the loftier pedigree, but were never tempted to condescend.

  There was an amount of come and go.

  But we hadn’t set eyes on him before …

  A hooded figure was just visible under the trees. A man with a collection of books tucked beneath one arm. As soon as he saw us, he immediately turned his back and hurried away.

  ‘Who’s that?’ we asked.

  ‘Our new hermit.’

  He called himself Nemo, ‘No One’, because he wanted to shed the manner of life he’d had.

  He lived in a grotto, beyond the ha-ha’s sunken fence. It was built like a two-thirds-scale gate-tower to a castle. The slit windows had been glazed, and a flue and fireplace put in, but apart from those the man lived with few creature comforts.

  ‘Candles. A cooking pot. He draws water from the well; a well we dowsed to find for him. It’s terribly quaint, don’t you think?’

  We concurred.

  ‘My father has him write down what he wants – well, what he needs, since he tells us he doesn’t have “wants” any more. And also there’s a resume of his activities for the past twelve months he has to supply in return for his keep. Which takes about ten lines.’

  So, this was what wealth allowed: the luxury of supporting other people’s eccentricities?

  We stood watching for a glimpse of him, taking care not to snag our finery in the cultivated wilderness of rough grass and nettles. When we spotted him, on the other side of the ha-ha, where the deer came to crop, he was watching us from the cover of the arboretum. Probably he was wondering at our own quirks: this show of sartorial vanity, and the herding impulse, our uniform fascination as we stared back stupidly with the white faces of showground sheep.

  * * *

  Charles told me that, following the report I’d given him, he’d come to an arrangement with Nemo.

  ‘You’ve what? “An arrangement”?’

  ‘That he’ll make himself scarce every so often, and we can avail ourselves of his hospitality. He’s quite well set up, you know. I thought it would be all sackcloth and ashes.’

  ‘You’ve seen where he lives?’

  ‘And so will you, very shortly.’

  I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, at the sheer effrontery. That eclipsed, for the moment, the question of propriety. He’d thought of that too.

  ‘I’ve got the loan of a lad. He can serve us tea. If he’s ever made the stuff.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he know how to make tea?’

  ‘Just wait and see.’

  Boodle was a Negro, fourteen or fifteen years old, dressed in blue velveteen and gold buttons. (A snug fit, and the velveteen was worn, and the buttons tarnished, but the effect was all.) He had a smile of sharp white teeth, and wanted to show willing.

  The lad’s tea was inexpert, but I’d had a thirsty walk over and any refreshment was welcome.

  The folly’s interior was a little cramped, to be sure, with low ceilings. But it was decently furnished, with a fireplace where pine cones sparked in the grate; the fragrance of pine helped smother the underlying whiff of damp.

  ‘Well, it’s better than nothing, I thought.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Yes indeed.’

  The shelves on the walls sagged with books. Some framed prints showed the grassy ruins of Rome.

  From the (glazed) window I could see Nemo pacing about reading.

  (‘I think he gets a bit lost if he strays too far. Don’t let the house out of your sight, I told him.’

  Was this another attempt not to offend the delicacies of bienséance, I wondered.)

  * * *

  And there we would go, to the hermitage, once every ten days or so over half a year, whenever he could get away and I could make the excuse of a long walk sola from Durley Chase. We were waited upon by the black boy while, outside, Nemo strode back and forth in view of us.

  We took tea. And we talked. I told him about life with the Chadwycks, and he discussed none too respectfully the august company they kept. I was a little bothered that we kept Nemo out of his house, but I was assured that he was being adequately recompensed for the inconvenience.

  ‘Some cash won’t go amiss, I dare say. Of course those hermits always come from decent families who can provide for their own. But who knows what the Osbornes have taken from him?’

  ‘Surely never,’ I said.

  ‘Never ones to miss out on a decent rental, the Osbornes.’

  ‘I thought a hermit was –’

  ‘A kind of decoration?’

  ‘– to prove their intellectual qualifications.’

  ‘Families like the Osbornes don’t profit by their intellectual qualifications.’

  ‘By what, then?’

  ‘Their mercenary instincts.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh yes. Come on, Catherine, that’s the way of the world.’

  The light playful tone of his voice puzzled me. If that was so, I said, then it was a harsh truth.

  ‘A brewer’s daughter like yourself too!’

  ‘I’m meant to know all about the world?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘This and that. But what it adds up to…’

  ‘Well, you can just sit tight. In your cosy nest.’

  ‘I can have aspirations, though.’

  ‘Oh, heiresses don’t need those!’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’

  He laughed, and I smiled, not because I agreed or even understood, but so that I wouldn’t – if only for the sake of five brief seconds – be left behind and start to lose him.

  * * *

  The things he knew about me. Trivial, unimportant things. It seemed to me those must be the most difficult facts of all to discover. That I preferred fish to meat, and grayling to mackerel, and sole to grayling. That I slept with my window slightly ajar, and never on two pillows. That I wore away the left inside of my right heel before any other part of either shoe. That I carried a sachet of orange blossom in my portmanteau. That I wrote letters wearing a clip-on cotton frill over my cuff. That I gargled with salt water three – and always three – times a day. And let down my hair and brushed it with fifty strokes – or as near as – every night before bed. That my favourite poet used to be Gray, but now it was Cowper. That I had the knack of cracking a Brazil nut lengthwise, and splitting an apple with just my two thumbs. That I preferred damsons, even bruised windfall, to a handful of sweet cherries. That I woke around seven o’clock every morning, whatever the season, however dark my bedroom was. That I always ran cream over the back of my spoon.

  As if he’d been prying on me through the windows of the Chase.

  * * *

  His discoveries about me occurred in several quite different conversations.

  I made a fuss about not wanting to hear any more, although I was fascinated to learn how he knew what he did.

  ‘I can’t betray my source. Or sources.’

  ‘I’m under surveillance by someone? Who?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You can’t know by yourself,’ I said.

  ‘Whyever not?’

  ‘You’d need to be invisible.’

  ‘A ghost?’

  ‘No, ghosts are people who’re dead to us. Over and done with.’

  ‘Then I’m the spirit of curiosity. A locked door is no impediment.’

  ‘Well, if you won’t tell me…’

  I was bemused, but not alarmed. He might have been guessing sometimes, he might have had good hearing for eavesdropping; the Durley staff were as liable to blab as any – and Satis House had employed several loose-tongued girls in recent years. I wasn’t bothered enough to think about it much, let alone worry. It might have been telepathy that was responsible, his kindred soul exactly in sympathy – in imaginative conjunction – with my own.

  * * *

  We were perfectly decorous together. It took the will of both of us to be so. I trusted him with me, and myself with him. The blackamoor shuffled about just outside the doorway, his ears tuned and the whites of his eyes shining in the darkness of the corridor, all his native skills of the hunt reapplied to protecting our staunch English etiquette.

  Maybe, a little bit, I didn’t want to trust myself so implicitly. But then I would try that much harder, fastening down hard on myself, to drive mischief of that sort right out of my mind.

  Dallying, once, while he was outside with the boy, I took down a copy of the Aeneid from the shelves.

  I found a passage I already knew, from Book IV.

  But anxious cares already seiz’d the queen;

  She fed within her veins a flame unseen;

  The hero’s valour, acts, and birth inspire

  Her soul with love, and fan the secret fire.

  At his approach I closed the book and quickly replaced it among the others before he should see. Virgil, I felt, didn’t fit in with this modus vivendi on our secret afternoons.

  * * *

  He seemed to sense the touch of damp or cold on my skin as soon as I did myself.

  ‘You’re a little chilly?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Here –’

  ‘No, I couldn’t possib—’

  ‘Come on.’

  He would remove his coat and drape it round my shoulders.

  ‘I should wear warmer clothes,’ I said.

  So, when I knew that I should, why didn’t I?

  * * *

  W’m’s engagement had been announced. Sheba and Mouse were still recovering from the shock.

  ‘We never thought…’

  It wasn’t to the young woman I thought I’d lost him to, but to one of her circle. The eldest Osborne daughter, and the plainest.

  ‘Of course it’s a very good match…’

  Even Mouse had shown impatience with slow-spoken, slow-thinking Lucinda in the past; Sheba had neglected her, in favour of the younger three by the second Lady Osborne.

  ‘I wish them well,’ I said, not really caring if I did or not.

  So much for a Cambridge education. All those people and places who were doomed to become my past …

  * * *

  ‘Catherine, meet my friend –’

  ‘“Your friend”?’

  ‘The Red Spaniard.’

  I looked about me. He laughed, and clicked his fingers. Clicked them again. The black boy came into the room at a run, bearing a bottle.

  ‘Like Canon Arbuthnot,’ I said.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘In our town. Entertaining his friend from Bordeaux.’

  ‘And glasses, Boodle. Glasses, please.’

  So we spent that afternoon, untypically, drinking red wine. I wondered if he had some cause, either for celebration or on the contrary to cheer himself, but he wouldn’t say. I grew a little silly, imagining I was dispensing wit.

  ‘“In the shadow of the gods”,’ I heard myself saying, ‘“I approach opulent altars”.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘That nonsense you were speaking.’

  ‘You’re right. Quite right. You were never righter. It makes no sense at all.’

  On my way home I stumbled into a puddle, but that was all part of the afternoon’s charm.

  Mouse saw me first.

  Was I all right?

  Here – She helped me upstairs.

  What on earth?

  I’m all right, I’m fine, really.

  Your breath.

  It’s nothing, I stopped by a farm.

  It’s cider?

  Yes, yes.

  Which farm?

  It doesn’t matter, I forget.

  Oh, Catherine!

  * * *

  I didn’t make the same mistake twice.

  Mouse and I exchanged private looks, but they weren’t as knowing as she wanted them to be. Something was afoot, she realised. But I was too complacent, or too fearful perhaps, to take her into my confidence.

  If I had – if I had explained to her where I went and who it was I met there, might the course of future events have been quite different?

  * * *

  Between my returns to Satis House I continued writing to Sally. Only she knew about the hermitage.

  What I might have recorded in a diary, Sally received from me.

  We play at cards! Stops mostly – Comet is v. fast – And Mariage. They’re games of bluff, he says – there’s a game inside the game, you have to get yr. opponent to declare – what you feel you never show, never.

  Sally wrote back. There was still no news of Arthur. She saw my father about the town; he was improved, but he knew to work a little less and to conserve his energies. Her mother spoke of sending her somewhere further off, to London maybe. But it hadn’t happened yet.

  Some matters, though, I didn’t confide even to Sally. I couldn’t have.

  * * *

  Whenever we accidentally touched at the gate-legged tea table or in the narrow doorway – fingers, back of the hand, wrist – it was like contact with sulphur. I felt that my skin was scorched for a minute or two afterwards. When he’d gone I would stare at the point of contact, as if there ought to have been a burn. Nothing worse resulted than some bright burnishing on my face, my neck.

  I wanted to plunge into cooling water, immerse myself.

  … and Joy shall overtake us as a flood.

  * * *

  He only had to reach forward, from where he was sitting, or to pause a moment as we risked a stroll at dusk. And he set up those nervous tremors again, spasms of excitement connected to feelings I couldn’t fully articulate to myself.

  It was cruelty: I should have seen it was that. But I was the very last person who would have.

  He had me on a chain. No: on a silken halter.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘And my mother thinks it will be good for me.’

  ‘Oh, Sally – How could it be good?’

  ‘The opportunity…’

  ‘You’ll have others.’

  ‘Not just a lady’s maid, though. I’m to have some housekeeping duties. The kitchen garden –’

  ‘In Hertfordshire? Why Hertfordshire?’

  ‘Why not Hertfordshire? It has to be somewhere.’

  ‘Only if you want to go.’

  ‘I have to think of the future.’

  She didn’t sound convinced. I told her so. She sighed.

  ‘And what shall I do?’

  ‘Your life is so busy, it can’t matter to you –’

  ‘Oh, Sally!’

  It must have had to do with her mother always wanting more and better for her. Did Satis House have too lowly a status now?

  ‘You must decide, Sally.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Won’t you think again?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Truly. But this is what I mean to do.’

  I asked where I could write to her.

  It would be best, she said, if I wrote to a female cousin of hers in London. She wasn’t sure that her employer would welcome correspondence.