Love in the Dark

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1907-2

When King Edward VII was staying in the house, the diamonds, the tiaras, necklaces, brooches, earrings and bracelets seemed to encase every lady guest almost like a coat of mail.

Everyone in the household, even in the nursery, knew that the King expected women to glitter and his sharp reprimand when the Duchess of Marlborough had appeared at dinner wearing a diamond crescent instead of the expected tiara lost nothing in the telling.

Susanna had watched May put on the Haven jewels when she came home with her husband soon after she had married.

The tiara of emeralds and diamonds, which seemed almost like a crown, had a necklace to match it and a colossal bow brooch that May pinned in the front of her bodice.

“You look like the Queen of Sheba!” Susanna had exclaimed.

Then she had seen the unhappiness in her sister’s eyes and knew that no jewels, however magnificent, could compensate her for what she had to endure from the proximity of the Marquis.

“Are you very – unhappy, May?” she whispered.

May had not looked at her sister, she had only stared in the mirror as if she saw, not the reflection of herself but a picture of the years ahead.

For the moment Susanna thought that she was not going to answer.

Then she said in a voice that was curiously old,

“I cannot talk about it, Susanna. There is nothing to say, nothing I can do, so please don’t ask me any questions.”

It seemed to Susanna after that, as if May was avoiding her until she had driven away with the Marquis in his smart travelling carriage.

She had kissed Susanna goodbye and her arms had seemed for the moment to cling to her sister as if she could not bear to let her go.

Although neither of them said anything, Susanna knew that it was an agony for May to leave home and drive away with the man she hated but she now belonged to.

‘That must never happen to me,’ Susanna had thought then.

Now standing at the drawing room door, she felt as if what she was hearing was the strike of doom.

She closed the door very very softly, then turned and walked back the way she had come up the back stairs to her bedroom which adjoined the schoolroom on the third floor.

In London the nursery had been renamed the schoolroom when Nanny left and was replaced by a Governess.

While Nanny had always seemed to be a fixture, Governesses changed frequently, owing to the fact that they disliked Lady Lavenham and she found them incompetent and never restrained herself from saying so.

“I can tell you, my Lady,” one of the Governesses had said in Susanna’s hearing, “that the Countess of Bressington was very satisfied with me for the ten years I was with her.”

She went and so did the two Governesses who followed her. Then, as far as Susanna was concerned, a miracle occurred.

Miss Harding was a teacher, tactful enough to placate Lady Lavenham, who could engage a pupil’s interest and stimulate her mind.

May unfortunately had only a year with Miss Harding before she married, but Susanna was taught by her for over two years.

To her Miss Harding had been a revelation because she had not only been able to answer all the questions that had puzzled her but directed her curiosity into the right channels so that she could find the answers for herself.

Lady Lavenham was not in the least interested in her daughters’ education, except that they should learn to speak French and Italian fluently.

Lord Lavenham often said that he found it a bore when he was staying at Sandringham to be obliged to converse both in French and English at the same time during a meal, changing from one language to the other, perhaps even in the same sentence.

But it was second nature to Lady Lavenham, who was determined that her daughters should not be deficient in this if in anything else.

Otherwise she was completely indifferent to what else they learnt or did not learn, except that they should be good housekeepers and be able to add up the bills and write a cheque.

This was something she never did herself as she employed an extremely efficient secretary to do it for her, but she told her daughters,

“If you have no wish to be cheated by inefficient servants or crafty ones, then you must understand money.”

In this Lady Lavenham was different from many of her contemporaries who merely understood how to spend money and do so with considerable success!

Susanna, however, had rebelled at finding herself restricted to nothing but arithmetic and French and Italian verbs.

She had started by being interested in history, but then she had realised that literature could be enthralling not merely in the novels that were the fashion of the moment or the insipid short stories that appeared in ladies’ magazines.

When she was reading, she could forget the disappointment she was to her father and her mother and her own reflection in the mirror.

It was Miss Harding who taught her about art and made her appreciate the pictures that hung on the walls of her home and those that they could admire in the National Gallery.

She had never realised before that her mother knew little of such things and was more concerned with the plants in the conservatory and the hothouse flowers that decorated the drawing room than the family treasures that had been accumulated by the Lavenham ancestors.

To Susanna it was a new world.

She and Miss Harding searched the bookshops for volumes that contained reproductions of pictures to be found in the great Galleries of Europe such as the Louvre in Paris and the Uffizi in Florence.

Every time she found a picture she particularly liked, Susanna began to feel that it was a treasure that belonged to her and that she owned it in a way that was impossible to explain in words.

Then most unexpectedly at the beginning of the year Lady Lavenham had told Miss Harding that she would be expected to leave in three months’ time.

Without waiting for an explanation from her Governess, Susanna had rushed downstairs to her mother’s boudoir in a manner that she had never done before and burst in on her.

“I hear, Mama, you have given Miss Harding notice!” she cried. “Why? Why must she go? I cannot lose her!”

Lady Lavenham was lying on a chaise longue wearing one of the clinging chiffon tea gowns that were the fashion for every lady in the afternoon.

It was a relief, Susanna understood, for the wearer to take off the tightly laced corset that pulled in her waist.

She was too innocent to know that the tea gowns had been invented for a very different reason.

She was, however, aware that when her mother was in London, the King and sometimes other gentlemen would call for an intimate hour when no one under any circumstances was to disturb her.

Fortunately, as they were in the country, Lady Lavenham was alone and the house party was not being expected until the following day.

“Kindly do not burst in on me in that rough manner,” Lady Lavenham said in an icy voice that usually made her daughter tremble.

At the moment Susanna was too upset to feel anything but indignation.

“Why have you told Miss Harding to leave, Mama?” she enquired.

“You are being rather more stupid than usual,” Lady Lavenham replied. “Your hair is untidy and I can see there is a spot of ink on your dress.”

“I asked you a question, Mama!”

“Then I suppose I must explain it in words of one syllable,” Lady Lavenham replied, “that as you are over eighteen, in fact almost too old to be a debutante, were it not that you were in mourning last Season, you are to be presented.”

Susanna looked at her wide-eyed.

“But does that mean Miss Harding must leave?”

“But of course. You would hardly want a Governess when you are ‘out’ and I presume, boring though it will be, I shall have to chaperone you everywhere.”

There was no doubt from the way she spoke that Lady Lavenham would find the task unpleasant.

Then she added sharply before Susanna could speak,

“For Heaven’s sake go upstairs and make yourself look more presentable. God knows how I will ever get you off my hands looking as you do now.”

For a moment Susanna stood staring at her mother. Then, as the blood rose crimson in her cheeks, she turned and walked from the boudoir.

Upstairs she went into her bedroom and sat on the bed feeling as if unexpectedly her whole world had fallen about her ears.

It was foolish of her but she had forgotten that she would have to make her debut and would be taken, as May had been, from ball to ball and from Reception to Reception. She knew that she would hate every moment of it.

How could she do anything else knowing that her mother was ashamed of her? That no man unless he was forced to do so would dance with her?

Foolishly it had never struck her that because she was to ‘come out’ she would lose Miss Harding.

She had been happier these last two years than she had been in her whole life, but she knew now that she might have realised that she was living in a fool’s paradise because she ought to have made her debut the previous summer.

It had been impossible because her grandmother had died and they had been plunged into deep mourning that made her mother look exquisitely lovely while she herself resembled a fat crow!

But now at eighteen and a half she would emerge on the Social world and she was intelligent enough to realise that from her mother’s point of view as well as her own, it would be a disaster.

The idea was so horrifying that Susanna sought for a bag of sweets that she had bought from the village shop and stuffed several of them into her mouth at once.

‘I shall look awful and feel worse,’ she told herself, ‘and when Miss Harding goes there will be no one to talk to and no one to be interested in anything I think or want to discuss.’

Then, as if everything moved with the smoothness of one of the new Express trains, plans were made to open the London house, to leave the country and for Miss Harding to say ‘goodbye’.

The night before she left, Susanna had cried until she could cry no more.

“What shall I do without you?” she sobbed. “You are the only person who has ever been kind to me, the only person who has treated me as if I was real. When you are gone, there will be no one!”

“Quite frankly, Susanna,” Miss Harding had said in her quiet voice, “there is little more I can teach you.”

Susanna had been so surprised she stopped crying and stared at her Governess, the tears wet on her cheeks.

“It is true,” Miss Harding said. “You must realise by now that you are very intelligent, far too intelligent for the life you will live.”

“But I shall – have to – live it,” Susanna answered.

“I suppose you must,” Miss Harding said with a sigh, “and there is no alternative for a girl born into your position in life. But it need not stop you from thinking, reading and from developing.”

“For what?” Susanna asked bitterly.

“For yourself,” Miss Harding replied.

She paused for a moment as if she was choosing her words carefully and then she said,

“Some people are completely happy with the Social round, the excitement of giving a bigger and better dinner party tomorrow than the one they attended yesterday, but I think you are different.”

“I hope – so,” Susanna murmured.

“I am sure you are,” Miss Harding said, “and I therefore think, Susanna, that you will always find new horizons for yourself. If you cannot do actually all you want to do, you can at least, do it in your imagination.”

Susanna clasped her hands together.

“But – you will not be here to – help me.”

Miss Harding paused a moment before answered,

“I have always believed that when we need something very much, and I am talking spiritually and not materially, someone is there to guide and help us. If it is not a person, it is books, music or prayer, we are never left entirely alone.”