The Buttonmaker’s Daughter

Chapter Three

Alice was on alert and heard the side door of the house click shut. She hoped her husband had not. But Joshua was still talking, still vehement, though a good deal calmer now. He seemed to have talked himself out of his anger and she had no wish to provoke a further outburst. She looked through the uncurtained diamonds of window glass and saw only darkness. What was Elizabeth doing walking in the gardens so late? At last her husband’s voice dwindled to a stop. He would return to her brother’s perfidy soon enough, but, for the moment, she could breathe freely.

‘Shall I call Ripley for tea?’ she asked hopefully.

He didn’t answer but shuffled to the edge of the sofa, then heaved himself to his feet and trod heavily across the polished oak floor. He enjoyed using the telephone, she knew. It was modern and efficient, two words that were his touchstone. His hand had reached for the instrument when she said, as casually as she could, ‘Did you think any more about the finishing school?’

‘I did not. And the answer is still no.’ He turned to face her, a grimace enlivening his otherwise stony expression. ‘I thought I’d made it plain that Elizabeth has no need to attend a foreign school. In my view, she is perfectly finished already.’

‘She is a credit to the family.’ Alice used her most emollient tone. ‘But would it not be a good idea to allow her to travel a little before she settles down? You have said yourself how wonderfully foreign travel broadens the mind. And, in Elizabeth’s case, it would be particularly beneficial. She would have a new setting in which to paint.’

‘She can paint here. She has her own studio, dammit. And as for travelling, she travelled more than enough last year and didn’t like it. This is where she belongs.’ He stomped back across the polished boards and spread his bulk along the printed velvet of the sofa. The effort pulled the Norfolk jacket tightly across his chest, its buttons looking ready to pop.

‘She travelled to London,’ Alice said mildly.

‘Exactly. And isn’t London the greatest city in the world? Even greater than Birmingham, though some would argue differently.’ His lips pulled back into the slightest of smiles. When his wife failed to acknowledge the pleasantry, he glared at her. ‘Where else should she go?’ he asked belligerently. ‘I don’t want her in Europe. Europe is a dangerous place – more so with every month that passes.’

‘But how is that possible? You are still in touch with Germany, are you not? Surely people there won’t want trouble. Or in France or anywhere else for that matter.’

‘Trade is one thing, war another. I’ll keep contact with Germany as long as it remains a good customer. The old factories do well from it. But it doesn’t mean I trust them. I don’t trust the man who leads them. The Kaiser is a swaggerer and he’s unpredictable; he’ll make trouble, mark my word. It may appear quiet at the moment but the Germans have the greatest army in the world – that’s something we should never forget. And now it has a navy to rival ours. They’ve been building a fleet large enough to threaten us at sea. Did you know that?’

She shook her head. She was hazy about the politics of Europe and could not argue. Not that she would, if she’d been Emmeline Pankhurst herself. It was not what women did. But, surely, Elizabeth would be safe in one of the best schools in Switzerland? And her daughter would gain so much from the experience. Different people, different customs, and encounters that could prove important. Introductions. Introductions that could lead to marriage and put the wild ideas Elizabeth had out of her mind. It was typical of Joshua that he couldn’t see the need for his daughter to widen her horizons. Summerhayes was the only horizon he could contemplate and what was right for him must be right for Elizabeth. But if the girl were to remain here, things could not stay the same. She approached the subject tentatively.

‘If Elizabeth is not to go to Switzerland, we might look for a suitable husband.’

‘She had the chance to find a husband and chose not to.’

He wanted to keep his daughter here. Keep her under his fond but watchful eye. And part of her sympathised. Marriage wasn’t the gilded promise that mothers held out to their daughters. She, of all women, should know that. But the girl’s future had to be considered. Joshua wouldn’t always be here and neither would she. Far better that Elizabeth had a home of her own long before that happened. And her daughter would have choice; she would not be forced to marry for money, as her mother had been.

‘London may have been the wrong place,’ she persisted. ‘The men she met there were not perhaps right for her.’ Though goodness knows what kind of man would attract her wayward daughter. ‘Someone closer at hand, someone from our own county, might suit her better.’

Joshua’s shoulders tensed in an angry fashion and she began to think it wise to abandon the conversation, when a quiet knock on the glass doors of the drawing room heralded Ripley and the tea tray. Her husband was forced to swallow his rancour but, when the footman had poured the tea and departed, he said, ‘Why can’t you leave the girl alone? She’s still young. She is happy here. Let her be.’

‘She is nineteen years old, Joshua. In a few months’ time, she will be twenty. She is in her prime, a time of her life when she should have the pick of husbands.’

‘Not like you, you mean.’

The warmth crept into her face and she took hold of the teacup with an unsteady hand. She hadn’t wanted the pick of husbands. She’d only ever wanted one, but a solicitor’s clerk was never going to match Fitzroy ambition. She had loved Thomas with the purity of the very young, and known herself loved in return. But their fate had been inescapable. Once discovered, the boy had lost his position and been harried out of Sussex. By the time she was despatched to London – a last-ditch attempt to save Amberley – her place was already reserved on the shelf for redundant spinsters.

She could still feel the humiliation of that summer in London. The Season had cost her family dear but failed to attract any offer of marriage, let alone from a man with money. That hadn’t surprised her. Since she’d lost Thomas, she had made little effort to please, and she knew she was judged unattractive and insipid. But her family had seemed strangely unprepared for her lack of success, her brother in particular. He’d been a stripling then but it hadn’t stopped him from reminding her, whenever opportunity offered, that she was an unwanted daughter. There had been a barrage of unkind comments – on her appearance, on her lack of personality. And it hadn’t stopped at taunts. On occasions, he’d grabbed her by the shoulders and physically shaken her or pinched an arm or a hand as he’d passed her chair, just to make sure that she wouldn’t forget the family’s disapproval. When she’d returned from London, it was with little hope of ever finding a husband. And even less hope of Amberley ever securing the money that would ensure the estate remained in Fitzroy hands. Until Joshua arrived in Sussex.

‘No, not like me.’ She had taken time to recover her composure. ‘Elizabeth’s situation is very different. There is no need for any kind of business arrangement.’

‘Considering how our business arrangement has worked out, it’s as well.’ He glowered at her and she was fearful that he would start once more on Henry’s most recent act of malice. But he was too busy brooding over past insults.

‘I saved your family from bankruptcy, poured thousands into Amberley, and what was my reward? It took me years to wrench land from your brother, land I was owed, land that your father had signed over. I had to go to law, expend even more money to get what was rightfully mine. And the result? Your brother has made trouble wherever and whenever he can. It’s clear he won’t be satisfied until he reclaims Summerhayes for his own. And, good God, wouldn’t he like to! A ramshackle manor house and the poorest of ground transformed. He longs to get his hands on what my wealth has created.’

There was a long silence while he drank his tea and looked through her at the wall behind, William Morris’s manila daisies seeming to grip all his attention. Whenever her brother acted badly, the old bitterness broke out anew. First her father, then Henry, had attempted to renege on the marriage agreement, and every tactic, every subterfuge, every gambit used to prevent her husband taking possession of land that was rightfully his was engraved on Joshua’s heart.

She had picked a bad time to raise the subject. She smoothed the creases from the messaline silk, one of the many expensive dove-coloured gowns Joshua insisted on buying, and took the empty teacups to the tray. He looked up as she did so, coming out of his studied gloom.

‘You must drop this idea of brokering a marriage, Alice. It will spell disaster. And there is no need for us to do a thing. Elizabeth will stay at Summerhayes and one day a young man will come along who takes her fancy. I’ll be able to inspect him, make sure he’s the right sort. And if he is, I’ll make him welcome. He can join me in the management of the estate, take some of the weight off my shoulders since William looks unlikely ever to do so.’

‘William is only fourteen.’ In defence of her youngest, she lost her timidity.

‘He is old enough to take an interest, but he remains a child. He hasn’t a serious thought in his head. And that boy you’ve invited here – Oliver, isn’t it? – if anything, he’s worse. Playing tricks on the servants, laughing in your face. The boy has no respect. But what can you expect coming from a family of Jews? That’s a little matter you didn’t tell me about.’

Oliver’s family was something to which she’d given no thought before agreeing to the boy’s stay, and she felt guilty at her oversight. But then there was rarely a moment when she didn’t feel guilty.

‘Once we can send him packing,’ Joshua pronounced, ‘he doesn’t come again.’

She wasn’t going to argue for Oliver. She wasn’t at all sure herself of the young boy’s suitability. Instead, she steered the conversation back to Elizabeth.

‘You wouldn’t wish Elizabeth to get into trouble,’ she said cautiously.

‘Of course, I wouldn’t. What are you talking about, woman?’

‘She’s young and headstrong. All this nonsense with the suffragettes – it’s had an effect on her.’

Joshua gave a loud tsk. ‘Don’t mention those women in my presence. They are a scandal, a disgrace to their sex.’

‘Elizabeth reads the papers. She is aware of what is happening beyond our sleepy corner of the country.’

‘Is she intending to create a disturbance, too, then?’ He gave a snort of derision. ‘In parliament perhaps or maybe at the racetrack. Should I give her a little hatchet, do you think, so she can join her sisters in slashing the nation’s works of art?’

‘I’m sure Elizabeth has no such ideas,’ her mother said seriously. ‘It’s their talk of female independence, female equality, that has caught her imagination.’

She saw that at last he was paying attention. ‘What has she been saying?’

‘Only that she sympathises with their aims. And that a woman should be able to decide her own future.’ This latter sentiment was barely murmured.

Despite his corpulence, Joshua bounced up from the sofa, his annoyance lending him flight. He began to pace up and down the drawing room, backwards and forwards across the soft tufts of the Axminster, until he had bruised its thick pile into a clearly marked track. He came to rest, towering over her.

‘And what precisely does that mean – decide her own future?’ His growl threatened trouble. ‘Doesn’t she have future enough here with me? I’ve been a good father; some would say too good. I’ve let her twist me to her wishes more times than I care to remember.’

‘You have,’ she soothed. ‘But perhaps as a good father, as good parents,’ she corrected, ‘we should take time to look for a suitable husband. A man who could guide her and guard her from getting into – trouble.’

‘And where do you propose to find him?’

She was glad he didn’t question the nature of any trouble. In some ways, she knew their daughter better than he, knew her wilful nature, the passion of which she was capable. For a clever man, he could be amazingly blind. He had only to look to himself to see his daughter mirrored there. The hours Elizabeth spent in her studio could only go so far in sublimating such feelings, Alice reasoned, and the thought of trouble was never far from her mind. Elizabeth’s solitary walks did nothing to calm her. A gently reared girl did not walk alone and certainly not after sunset – her daughter knew the rules well enough, but took no heed of them.

When she didn’t answer, he warned, ‘If Elizabeth should ever marry, it must be to a man of stature. I’ll not have her marry beneath her – a tradesman or some such.’

It was a perfect irony. Joshua was such a tradesman, a very rich one it was true, but a tradesman nevertheless. The fact that he appeared oblivious to the contradiction gave her the courage to confess what she had in mind.

‘We should, perhaps, look to family connections. My family connections.’

‘I married you for your connections, remember, and where has that got me? And since you are all but separated from your family, it’s not likely to get us anywhere now.’

She ignored his jeering tone and took a slow breath before she said, ‘Henry might aid us.’

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Aid us! The man has done nothing but cause harm, or try to, since the moment I dared to reclaim what was mine from his penniless estate.’

She disregarded the slight to her family home and pushed on. ‘But this might be something with which he would be willing to help.’

The Fitzroys had saved their estate through marrying her to Joshua, but they had also lost caste. Another marriage might help them regain it. Henry had hated the necessity that assigned her to Joshua – she’d sold herself, he had said – even though it was he who had encouraged their father to sign the contract. He who had placed the pen in the older man’s hand. Might this be an opportunity then to salvage some honour from a bad deed?

‘Elizabeth is his niece,’ she went on, ‘and a good marriage would redound to his credit as much as ours. She is a beautiful girl and there is nothing to say she could not make a very good marriage.’

Joshua was silent. She had given him pause. Last year, he had been furious with his daughter for rejecting two acceptable suitors, but his anger hadn’t lasted. Deep down, she knew, he’d wanted to keep his daughter by his side. But if, after all, Elizabeth were to make that splendid marriage, it would be a crown to his career. A trumpet call announcing to the world that here was a man who was as good as any of his neighbours.

He walked slowly over to the blank window, a new pair of balmoral boots creaking beneath his weight, then turned and frowned at her.

‘You’ll have to tackle him then. He’s your brother. His latest act of spite makes it intolerable that I should exchange even a “good morning” with the man.’

She was not a courageous person, but where her children’s welfare was concerned, she could fight as well as the next woman. Any suggestion that Joshua had not thought her brother worthy of consulting on such a delicate family matter would antagonise Henry even further. If that were possible.

‘The approach will only be successful if it comes from you, Joshua,’ she said firmly. He didn’t, as she expected, immediately rail at her and she was emboldened to continue, ‘We will see the Fitzroys in a few days – at morning service. And church might be the very place to make peace with them.’

Again, Joshua said nothing. She had no idea what he was thinking. All she could hope was that her words had hit home and, come Sunday, he would unbend sufficiently at least to speak to his brother-in-law.

The difficult evening had taken its toll and her head had begun its familiar ache. She rose from her chair, stiff from sitting so long. ‘I’m feeling a little weary. And I need to check on William before I retire.’

‘At his age! Ridiculous! You mollycoddle the boy,’ were her husband’s parting words.

She said nothing in reply but walked out into the hall. She would look in on the boys before she slept. Satisfy herself that all was well with her youngest and dearest. As for the business of Elizabeth’s marriage, she hoped she’d said enough to begin some kind of thaw. The Summer family led a lonely life and if Henry could be persuaded to introduce one or two likely suitors to their restricted circle, then youth and proximity might do the rest. It was important that her daughter find the right man, a man she could love and respect. Not for Elizabeth the pain of an ill-assorted liaison or the indignity of being bought and sold in a marriage made by others for others. Not an arranged marriage, but an encouraged one. That was a more comfortable thought.

Chapter Four

William’s door was slightly ajar and she pushed it open a little further. The room was large and high-ceilinged, its tall windows giving onto a rolling expanse of green and filling the space with light and air. It was the room William had chosen for himself when he’d emerged from the nursery. She remembered how proud he’d been, a small boy sleeping alone for the very first time. The room might be spacious but there was barely a spot that was not filled to overflowing with evidence of the passing years. Over time, her son had followed many interests, this shy, sensitive boy with his finely honed curiosity. This summer, it was nature that had taken hold of his imagination – several boards stood at angles to the the wall, displaying leaves of every shape and size and colour, all carefully mounted and labelled. The large wooden desk she’d had the men bring down from the attic stood beneath the window and was piled high with reference books. The Trees of Great Britain & Ireland lay open on the floor.

But the toy theatre that had once dominated William’s time was huddled against the far wall. Cornford had been skilful in producing a facsimile stage made of wood and cardboard, with a row of tin footlights with oil burning wicks along the front. For years, every penny of William’s pocket money had been spent on sheets of characters and scenes. He’d managed to persuade Elizabeth to write several short plays and even help him perform them. Since then, the theatre had been supplanted by other hobbies, as once it had supplanted the regiments of lead soldiers. They were crammed into a battered wooden trunk, along with the clockwork train that had once run the circumference of the room.

But there in the centre was what really mattered – two beds, side by side, and two boys sleeping soundly, exhausted by their day in the sun. How well her son looked! Oliver would never be a favourite with her but it was enough that William liked and trusted him. She allowed herself a satisfied smile and backed quietly out of the room.

At the sound of his mother’s approach, William had shut his eyes tightly. He didn’t want her fussing over him, asking him why he was still awake, offering to bring medicine to help him rest. He wanted simply to lie there, to lie and watch Oliver sleep. He’d been watching him ever since his friend had drifted into a deep slumber. Olly was stretched lengthways down the bed, the covers thrown to one side. One arm was propped beneath his head, his dark hair a clear contrast to the white linen of the pillowcase. The other arm lay outside the covers, slightly bent towards William and, in the narrow beam of moonlight that crept between the drawn curtains, he could see the small dark hairs on Oliver’s arm. They looked soft and inviting, and he felt a strong impulse to reach out and stroke them. It left him confused, disturbed. Olly was his friend. That was the sort of thing you did with girls, he’d heard, though he could never imagine himself touching a girl. You didn’t do it with friends. Chaps pushed each other around, cuffed each other’s ears in play, but that was different. Everyone did that. What would Olly say if he woke to find his friend stroking his arm? He would think William had run mad and he’d be right.

This was the first time they had ever shared a bedroom, since at school they slept in different dormitories. And they were taught by different teachers, too, so their hours together were precious. They would meet at break times, meal times as well, and after prep if it were possible. It was Olly who had rescued him one evening from Highgrove’s biggest bully and that kindly act had cemented their alliance. Since then, they’d become the best of friends. The two musketeers, Olly had called them. How right that had felt; it hadn’t seemed to matter then that he didn’t fit in, would never fit in. It wasn’t just his background that was wrong, it was the way he felt. That was all wrong, too. When his classmates whispered about girls, it made him curl up inside. He pretended to be interested, anything to keep from another beating, but those sniggering conversations made him feel odder than ever. He couldn’t imagine wanting to do what the boys spoke of.

He looked across at Olly again, his gaze fixed on the boy’s beautiful skin, and was awash with a strange hollowness. Bewildered, he tossed himself to the other side of the bed, his back to Oliver. At school, there were rules to follow, orders to obey, and daily life was cut and dried. But these last few weeks had been different. It was this magical summer that was at fault. That and the beauty and freedom of the gardens. It was being at Summerhayes that was making him anxious. Nothing was cut and dried here. Not with Olly. Boundaries seemed to be dissolving, growing fainter every day. There was nothing to grasp, no certainty to hang on to. How was he to deal with that?