All My Sins Remembered. Rosie Thomas
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eyes snapped open.
She saw a man she had never met, a big man in odd black clothes made even odder-looking by his big, thick black beard. He must have come silently over the grass, although his feet looked big enough to make a clatter on any surface.
‘I am perfectly all right. Why should you think I am not?’
‘I wondered if you were going to faint. Or worse, perhaps.’
It came to her how she must have looked, drooping with closed eyes between the soaking leaves, and her face turned red.
‘Thank you, but there’s no danger of anything like that. Unless as the result of shock. From being pounced on in an unguarded moment by a perfect stranger.’
‘By a peculiar-looking person far from perfect, don’t you mean?’
The man was smiling. His beard seemed to spread around his jawline. The smile revealed his shiny mouth and healthy white teeth.
‘I don’t mean anything,’ Eleanor said, retreating from this newcomer. ‘Will you excuse me? I should go and make myself ready for luncheon.’
To her surprise, the man turned and began to walk with her across the grass towards the house. He strolled companionably with his hands behind his back, looking from side to side.
‘This garden is very beautiful,’ he said. And then, peering sideways at Eleanor with unmistakable mischief, he recited, “Sed vos hortorum per opaca silentia longe Celerant plantae virides, et concolor umbra.” Do you know the lines?’
Blanche and Eleanor’s governesses had had to negotiate too many other obstacles at Holborough. There had been little time to spare for Latin verse.
‘No,’ Eleanor said. She was thinking that the man was not such a misfit at Fernhaugh as his appearance suggested. No doubt the Souls would all be familiar with the verse, whatever it was. Or would at least claim to be.
‘No? It’s Marvell, of course. He is addressing Innocence. He finds her in the shaded silences of gardens, far off, hiding among the green plants and like-coloured shadow.’
‘Thank you so much for the translation.’ Eleanor took refuge in briskness. They had reached the terrace and the open doors of the drawing room were only a few steps away. ‘Don’t let me detain you any further in your search for Innocence amongst the rose-bushes.’
The man was smiling again, looking full into her face. He seemed very large and dark and exotic in the English summer garden. He wouldn’t let her go so easily. ‘In the absence of our hostess, may I introduce myself? I am Nathaniel Hirsh.’
‘Eleanor Holborough.’
The man’s hand enveloped hers. The grip was like a bear’s.
‘And now you must excuse me.’
Eleanor mounted the two steps to the terrace level and passed out of the sunshine into the dimness of the drawing room. Nathaniel watched her go. He was thinking with irritation that although he had been born in England, and had lived in England for most of his twenty-six years, he would never make an Englishman. He could never get the subtle nuances of behaviour quite right. He could never even get the broad principles. Today he had arrived for luncheon at least an hour too early. Then he had seen a striking girl daydreaming in the wonderful garden. An Englishman would have approached her with some stiff-necked platitude and she would have known exactly how to respond. But instead he had pounced on her with some clumsy joke. And then he had begun declaiming in Latin. Innocence amongst the green plants and like-coloured shadow, indeed.
Yet, that was how she had looked.
‘You will never learn, Nathaniel,’ he said aloud. But he was humming as he leant over and picked a yellow rose from the branch trailing over the terrace wall. He slid the stem into his buttonhole. He had liked the look of Eleanor Holborough. He had liked even better her cool admission of ignorance of Marvell’s Hortus. Nathaniel did not think many of the other guests at Fernhaugh would have acknowledged as much. He liked Philip Haugh well enough, but he did not have much patience with the rest of the crew.
He reminded himself now that he had accepted Philip’s luncheon invitation in order to come and observe the idle wealthy at play, and to be amused by them. He could see Lady Haugh beyond the drawing-room doors, so he judged that it was at last the acceptable time to arrive. Nathaniel felt familiar exasperation. How could he have known that the fashionable hour was so much later than stated?
But now that he was here he would go in and be amused, as he had intended, and at the same time he would take the opportunity of seeing where Eleanor Holborough fitted into this languid coterie.
When Eleanor came into the drawing room again the rest of the guests were assembled. She looked around quickly and saw Nathaniel Hirsh. He was talking to Philip Haugh and Norton Ferrier. Beside Philip’s well-bred colourlessness and Norton’s perfectly sculpted feminine beauty it surprised her to see how very large and dishevelled and red-blooded he looked. From time to time his huge, booming bass laugh filled the murmuring room. Eleanor sensed that the other guests had to restrain themselves from turning around to stare. And to her surprise she felt her sympathy was with Nathaniel, rather than with Mary and Norton and their friends. What had he said or done to make her feel that they were a special minority of two?
Nathaniel had seen her, but he made no effort to navigate his way through the party to her side. Eleanor concentrated very hard on the conversation immediately around her, and wondered why not.
She need not have worried. Nathaniel had already discovered from Lady Haugh that they were to be seated together at the luncheon table. He was waiting for his chance.
There was no formal taking-in at Fernhaugh, but when Lady Haugh leant elegantly on Norton Ferrier’s arm and drifted towards the dining room, Nathaniel materialized at Eleanor’s side. Philip Haugh murmured the briefest introduction. Nathaniel took her hand and bowed over it, as though they had never seen each other before. On his arm Eleanor felt small and light, as if the toes of her shoes barely touched the floor.
‘Now then,’ he said as they sat down, ‘we can talk. Tell me exactly who you are, and what you are doing here.’
Eleanor told him, and he listened intently. For the first time, she talked about herself without referring to Blanche. She laid out the bare facts of her life as if it had been hers alone, and just as Blanche had done she discovered that it was agreeable to be reckoned with for herself, instead of as one half of a whole. It was more agreeable still just to sit with this unusual, suddenly solemn man looking into her eyes. The food came and went. The partners on their opposite sides were brutally neglected. Mary Ferrier caught Lady Haugh’s eye, and they exchanged a small, surprised moue.
‘I have a twin sister,’ Eleanor said at length, touched by a finger of guilt. ‘She was married earlier this year.’
‘You miss her,’ Nathaniel remarked, as if stating what was obvious.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Are you very alike?’
‘We are identical.’
Nathaniel’s thick eyebrows drew together. When he opened his mouth Eleanor saw the movement of his tongue and the elastic contraction of his lips. She had never been so sharply aware of anyone’s physical nearness, of the few inches of air and layers of cloth between them. She should have glanced away, but she let his eyes hold hers.
‘I don’t think so,’ Nathaniel said softly. ‘I believe you are unique.’
Eleanor did look away, then. She turned deliberately to her neighbour on the other side, and began a conversation about architecture. She did not turn back until she was sure of herself, and when she did speak to Nathaniel again it was in an attempt to take control.
‘You haven’t told me who or what you are. It’s your turn to confess now.’ To her disgust Eleanor knew that she sounded arch rather than commanding. Nathaniel’s mouth twitched in the depths of his beard.