* * *

  Somehow the service passed, and as soon as I had reached the porch I had already forgotten whatever easy words the priest had spoken.

  By the graveside I was aware only of not raising my eyes in the direction of the straggling ilex tree, because that was the one he was standing beside. I glanced round again at Arthur, who was watching the pallbearers’ efforts with disdain. (He hadn’t offered to be one of them; his past was quite enough of a burden to him, without making an example of himself to all and sundry.)

  It was only then that I forgot not to look over at the shiny jagged ilex tree, and when I did I found Charles quietly smiling: to encourage me, I told myself, to assure me he understood the very charybdis of violent emotions this day was putting me through.

  He had arrived wearing deep second mourning. A black silk hat with crepe about the crown and a knotted bow. Black buckles.

  I had no reason to be surprised. Perhaps it was the sight of him in so much black that moved me to tears: living and breathing and intensely alive inside his impeccable sartorial restraints.

  ‘It was the death he would have wanted,’ someone had the effrontery to say in my hearing, between noisy mouthfuls of tea, as I walked about the room.

  People’s faces were distorted as they tried to cram chicken legs and portions of pie and cake into their mouths. They drank quickly, before anyone else could drain the decanters.

  They disgusted me. They had nothing to do with me.

  I had one friend here, the truest, but where were the others who had called themselves my friends?

  * * *

  A letter of condolence arrived from Lady Chadwyck. But, it occurred to me on re-reading for the fifth or sixth time, the condolences might have been due to the sender.

  – I feel this to be as great a Loss to myself. The Acquaintanceship of Mr Havisham occurred most propitiously for me, when my Trust in my fellow Mortals was deserting me. Your father had an undue Sensitivity – for a Man, I mean – as to the Wants of a Noblewoman (the which he insisted on calling me!) left prematurely widowed.

  The letter rambled on – written beyond midnight, surely – and skirted round the precise nature of the relationship with the departed. Lady Chadwyck was still shocked by the news, and trying to put her own thoughts regarding the future into some (cryptic) order.

  No letter arrived from any of the others. They would have heard, wouldn’t they? Or had Lady Chadwyck preferred to conceal the news from them for a while – until the mist of uncertainty obscuring, so to speak, the lawns and topiary of Durley Chase had cleared a little.

  * * *

  After the will had been read, my father’s lawyer took me outside into the Cherry Garden.

  ‘No surprises there, I dare say.’

  ‘If you wish to put it like that, Mr Snee. No, there weren’t.’

  ‘Mr Arthur doesn’t appear too pleased.’

  He had just discovered that his inheritance was to be paid in annual instalments over ten years.

  ‘It may teach him virtues of economy,’ I said. But I doubted that very much.

  Mr Snee was a small man, smaller than myself, with a face that might have been sharpened with a knife – and then treated with preserving vinegar. When my father first became acquainted with him, the lawyer was thought well of, but lean and hungry for success. Success soon came to him, and those clients he chose to retain were similarly equipped to do well.

  My father had always been a little in awe of him; any meeting was preceded by an unusual degree of nervousness, even tension, in his manner.

  ‘So you knew what to expect, Miss Havisham?’

  ‘My father did explain to me.’

  ‘To you both?’

  ‘To us both, yes.’

  His nose, when I inclined my head to the right and glanced a little down, looked sharp enough to cut my hand on. Then I realised that, without needing to turn his head, his eyes were swivelled sideways in their sockets, watching me.

  I was embarrassed, and jumped in.

  ‘But it’s just me, is it, you want to speak to, Mr Snee?’

  ‘Since it concerns yourself, yes, I judged it best.’

  * * *

  And he explained. (Before, he said, I should hear about it some other way.)

  My father, he began, had been lending money for several years to a certain beneficiary.

  ‘“Lending money”?’

  ‘On such favourable terms, some might have judged the exercise foolhardy.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘That is the nub.’

  ‘Someone connected with my stepmother?’

  ‘There is no connection.’

  ‘To whom, then?’

  ‘You can’t guess?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Really and truly?’

  ‘I can’t guess. Please, Mr Snee, tell me.’

  Should I have been able to deduce the answer for myself?

  ‘Your patroness, no less.’

  ‘I beg your pardon –’

  ‘The good Lady Chadwyck herself.’

  I knew immediately how often I would return in my mind to these moments, how my memories of Durley Chase would be endlessly complicated by the item of information I had just been given.

  * * *

  What it had amounted to was this: my father, for his own reasons which he judged best, had gained the amity of the Chadwycks for me by the only means he knew. By buying it with his tradesman’s ready money.

  ‘Why, though?’

  ‘You are a wealthy young woman, Miss Havisham.’

  ‘I can’t deny it.’

  ‘I expect you’ll have a wider circle now.’

  ‘Very probably. But –’

  ‘More friends than you ever knew you had.’

  ‘What does this –’

  ‘Your father craved – that isn’t too strong a word – he craved you should have an introduction to that world. He wished doors to open for you. You needed to receive a training first.’

  And the Chadwycks had obliged. My father had made it worth their while to oblige. His association with Lady Charlotte had been mercenary from the outset.

  ‘And the understanding with her ladyship? You’d like that to continue? Or…?’

  * * *

  Why not continue with the arrangement? I could afford to do so. I wanted to prove to the Chadwycks, and also to myself, that I wasn’t petty. (And maybe I wanted to savour too a little of my own glory.)

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Mr Snee.’

  ‘Have you seen any of them since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or corresponded?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘We need discuss it no further. And my discretion in the business is naturally guaranteed.’

  I nodded my appreciation.

  Such attentiveness, from one whose erstwhile reputation for quick thinking and lawyerly subtlety had always been so considerable. I was bound to be paying for it, and heavily, but I was a rich woman now.

  * * *

  I concluded that money was capable of doing good and also terrible things.

  It had brought comfort to Lady Chadwyck, but it had perverted relationships, making them seem what they weren’t – and what they had no right to be.

  I saw now, normally they would never have had the need to consort with the likes of me. Only my father’s money had persuaded the children, at their mother’s bidding, to entertain what must always have seemed to them an improbable friendship.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sally, Sally.

  Maybe she had other interests now, and other loyalties? I presumed her cousin had received and sent on my own letters. Could it be that Sally had left Miss Stackpole’s employment, or even been dismissed? If the latter, she would have felt embarrassed to write straight away; and time has a way of turning small procrastinations into habits. She might have felt it had got awkward, to take up where she’d left off, without the need of some explanation.

  I was doing all I could to excuse Sally. Couldn’t she get just an inkling of it, and respond with the briefest of notes, merely to keep in touch with me? Whatever her reasons for not communicating, I was only too ready and willing to forgive her.

  * * *

  Arthur was coming in at all hours. He had meals prepared in the middle of the night. He let his dogs have the run of the house, his boots left the floors in a mess. Things had gone missing.

  ‘So, what is this? A house, or some private museum?’

  ‘You treat it like a staging-inn. And sometimes like a farmyard.’

  I heard myself raising my voice at him. Which only set him smiling.

  ‘Don’t go upsetting yourself on my account –’

  ‘I’m not…’

  ‘Save yourself for someone who deserves you.’

  His smile turned to rude, knowing laughter.

  * * *

  I received a letter from him.

  ‘Most obediently, Charles.’

  It carried no address except ‘London’.

  My Dear Catherine,

  I’m afraid that my Affairs are likely to detain me awhile. As you know I travel up to Norwich and whatnot, & things are at a head at the moment wh. makes it difficult to get away. You need all yr. wits for Business, as you will appreciate, & there is the possibility I shall have to venture further afield, wh. will be unplanned if & when. But I do assure you of my continuing concern, if I might presume so, & my best regards for your Success & Welfare.

  Even allowing for his stylistic lapses, I concluded that the letter had been hastily written. He was telling me as much as he wanted me to know.

  I read the letter over dozens of times. I wished I could reply.

  Like Goethe’s Werther, ‘Today I put your letter to my lips and the contact of paper had me gritting my teeth.’

  * * *

  I went into my father’s office and sat down. I leaned back in the chair, and felt too small for it. The proportions of my back to the chair back and my legs to the shank of the seat were wrong.

  He had sat here for twenty-five or thirty years, since he had inherited the private room – next to the general Compting House – from his father. This had offered him his outlook on the world. The desk, the shelves of past ledgers, the view of the brewhouse, the roofs of the outhouses, a few trees, a church tower. With the window sash pushed up, he would have been able to hear snatches of gossip and tittle-tattle from downstairs, when the domestic staff had recourse to pass the brewery workers or the delivery men.

  And yet I wondered just how much I had really known with any degree of certainty about him.

  I opened a ledger at the final completed page. ‘Purchases’. I read down the figures on the list, entered in his tidy hand.

  Tears welled up. Hot spicy tears that nipped my eyes. They sped down the runnels on my cheeks, dropped from my chin on to the page, and instantly blotted the ink. My own mark of proprietorship.

  * * *

  Rates assessment:

  £50 – Brew house

  £70 – 4 malthouses

  £26 10s 0d – 8 storehouses

  £15 – 2 warehouses

  £2 – cellar

  £3 – cinder ovens

  £10 – stock valued at £200

  Twenty-four public houses had an average rateable value of £6 16s 5d.

  I had to acquaint myself with the alternative accounting methods in the Compting House – and the twain didn’t necessarily match, or were meant to.

  Victuallers’ Book, to register sales in butts to public houses.

  A book to record country trade.

  A Petty Ledger, detailing private dealings with favoured (personal) clients.

  A Yeast Book.

  A Grain Book, both specifying sales.

  Additionally there were:

  Brewing Books, noting every aspect of production, including each successive brew.

  Letters Book.

  Loan Ledger.

  Bond Ledger.

  Interest Ledger.

  Rent Ledger.

  Inventory Ledger.

  Stock Ledger.

  * * *

  My father’s office contained two other sets of records. First, the Rest Books: the yearly balance drawn up in early June, referring to debts and liabilities, and placing a value on the combined stock and trade. (Because my father was sole proprietor, answerable only to himself, he was under no obligation to keep these Rest Books. But since he had done, I deduced that he may have intended bringing in partners, or effecting an alliance with another sort of business than a brewer.) Secondly, the Private Ledgers: a register of every loan accepted and made that concerned the firm. These were kept in a separate locked drawer, intended for no one’s eyes but my father’s.

  * * *

  I had my clerks to assist me: the home clerks in the Compting House, and the abroad-clerks, who collected the monthly payments from publicans. Mr Tice was the brewery manager, whom I inherited. I promoted Mr Ambrose to be my chief clerk, which didn’t please some of the others, not least Mr Tice.

  I privately and confidentially asked Mr Ambrose if he would be a separate conduit to me of the brewers’ and coopers’ affairs, since – he might have guessed, although I didn’t state it so to him – I wasn’t confident that I was receiving all the information I needed via the regular, formal channels.

  * * *

  Another letter arrived from Charles, from London, forwarded through a third party. He told me he was obliged to leave the country for a while – on a matter relating to business, he said, which had arisen quite unexpectedly. It wasn’t clear to him how long it would be until he returned: not before there was a satisfactory outcome, at any rate. But he assured me of his most sincere best wishes in the interim, and every success in dealing with the affairs of the brewery, as a little bird told him I was doing.

  * * *

  I re-read this letter, as I had done the previous one, dozens of times. I imagined where he might be. If not the British Isles – France, or Holland, or further afield than either? How thoughtful of him to dwell on my own struggles here to make sense of the brewery finances when he had his own equally pressing concerns.

  I was to hear from him four more times over the next seven months. Every communication was one to be treasured. It surprised me a little to think of someone so fond of the excitement of chance games – cards, racing – currently having to subjugate himself to whatever those ‘business matters’ were.

  But now we had this new and unanticipated bond between us.

  * * *

  I wrote to Lady Chadwyck, thanking her for her commiserations, and those of the children that had eventually followed. I explained that I was necessarily detained at Satis House, that it wasn’t at all clear to me when I might get away. I phrased my next remark with care: hoping that their own lives ‘continued as before’. (Meaning – continued without any financial disturbance or upset.)

  Once Durley Chase had seemed to me a fine and even perfect place. The octagonal domed house on its airy knoll; the french doors standing open. Family portraits, Greek maidens and their suitors gambolling round the ceiling friezes. The lawns, the peripheries of long grass; the picturesquely convenient fallen boles, the designed vistas.

  Now … I felt now that I had outgrown it. That gracious but stultifying existence, the proper – oh, always so proper – narrowness of its scope. I was bored with it, the decorous routines, the never too indiscreet gossip, even the theatricals where we pretended at nobility and legend we fell so far short of.

  Everything, finally, had been play, which seemed to me not enough for a life.

  * * *

  I found a forgotten garter halfway up the second flight of stairs, kicked into the corner of one of the treads. I extracted it with the toe of my shoe. A frilled, flesh-pink garter.

  The scene inside the hermitage on that last day flashed into my mind.

  ‘Arthur! Arthur!’

  ‘What in hell’s all this noise about?’

  ‘You recognise this?’

  ‘I know what a garter looks like.’

  ‘And its wearer?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘D’you forget so easily?’ I asked him.

  He raised his eyes. They were pink-rimmed, short-sighted, weak.

  ‘Not wearing it, of course,’ I said. ‘That is the point.’

  ‘Since when have I been accountable to you?’

  I tried to field his question with a dismissive stare. A scowl. But it didn’t silence him.

  ‘Why should I listen to what a frustrated virgin tells me?’

  That was too much for me.

  ‘I won’t have your harlots in this house. My father’s house.’

  ‘Our house.’

  ‘I’ll wear you down, I promise you. If they don’t first. I’ll prey on you, Arthur, until this is the last place you ever want to come again.’

  I couldn’t bear to have his company under the same roof after that. So, without consulting him but issuing my directive (as a command), I ensured that by partitioning the building into my territory and his, technically under two roofs, we shouldn’t have to encounter one another more than once or twice in a week.

  His friends were informed by him – with more accuracy than error – that I had planted spies among the household staff, and that he was treated as something of a criminal himself. Those same cronies of his were unsettled to be here, and came about much less often in this colder climate that prevailed.

  * * *

  I took solace in my work. It didn’t bother me that Arthur remained uninvolved. Not in the least. The office wouldn’t have been a refuge to me otherwise. An active refuge. I put in enough hours for the two of us.

  * * *

  Weeks passed. I hardly noticed. Just as I no longer noticed the smell of brewery hops in the air. Facts and figures, only those. A game of holding my nerve, when everyone else (except Mr Ambrose) thought I was bound to buckle at last.

  * * *

  The name HAVISHAM was repainted on the brewhouse wall. It had taken the weather; the paint blistered by the sun, the brickwork nibbled at by storms.

  The letters remained green, and the same shape, but now they had a thin gilt strip on one side while, on the other, they dropped a small black shadow.