Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

He had thought the conversation concluded and already moved towards the door when the Vizegrafin spoke again. ‘You still carry our father’s cane with you, Gabriel. Family must mean something to you.’

Crowther’s fingers twitched on the latch and he left the room.

‘Do you like it, my dear?’ Mrs Briggs asked.

Harriet’s private sitting room on the first floor in fact delighted her. It was a pretty chamber that managed to be tasteful without unnecessary fuss. The walls were papered and the Chinoiserie designs of peacock, peony and branch made the room light. The furniture was honey-coloured and on the little round table set in the window was a bowl of foxgloves. Mrs Briggs stepped into the room to adjust the fall of the stems. She seemed a little nervous now, for all her volubility on their arrival.

‘Quite lovely,’ Harriet replied, and Mrs Briggs flushed a little.

‘Fairy flowers, my mother always called these. She used to make tea for my father with them when his chest hurt him. All the marigolds in the garden have withered in this strange weather, but these flourish.’ She smiled at her guest and took her seat on one of the armchairs by the table. ‘But come, Mrs Westerman, take off your gloves and let us be comfortable.’

Harriet was happy to exchange the swaying carriage for the chair indicated, and within ten minutes of taking her place she found that she and her hostess were in the way of coming to a good understanding of each other. No matter how she had talked them into the house, Mrs Briggs was also an attentive and curious listener. Before Harriet could quite take measure of the way her own tongue was running on, she realised Mrs Briggs now knew as much about her home and household as her nearest neighbours, and rather more than they did about her husband’s death. The woman offered no homilies, she did not clutch her hand and offer to weep with her, and neither did she retreat into the language of euphemism when speaking of death. Harriet found she spoke with more freedom and feeling because of it. She finished her narration of the events of 1781 and lowered her head, rather shocked by her own openness. Perhaps Caveley had been pressing on her even more than she had imagined.

‘Oh, it is a horror and no mistaking it,’ Mrs Briggs said, shaking her grey curls. ‘I am glad the man who killed your husband died such a death, though I am sure you wish you could have struck the blow with your own hand. So many of our good men die before they see their children grown, while the fat and lazy lie all comfortable in their beds and when they rise cause nothing but trouble.’ She spoke with such conviction Harriet wondered if she herself had suffered such a loss, yet she knew Mr Briggs was alive and superintending some of his business interests abroad.

The question must have appeared on her face, for Mrs Briggs explained: ‘It was a sweetheart of my youth I lost, Mrs Westerman. And I thought I would never recover from it. He was killed in a brawl in a tavern in Manchester. Such a stupid, pointless death. Yet they all are, however much we try to dress them up.’

‘Indeed,’ Harriet replied.

‘Though of course I was only fifteen then, and recovered from my loss. I would not have such a fine house or fine view if I had married Ambrose Muncaster, apprentice butcher! No, Mr Briggs was only a clerk when I met him, but ambitious — very ambitious. Then came the first store and he began to import, and here we all are.’

Harriet stiffened slightly, expecting remarks on the healing power of time to follow and explanations of the various, secret destinies God has planned for us all. She was rather brutally spared. ‘But of course I was a great deal younger than you then, and had not his children before me as constant reminders of what was lost to us both.’

‘Is Mr Briggs still ambitious?’

Mrs Briggs threw up her hands. ‘Lord, yes! It is his nature and I cannot change it or wish it otherwise. I cannot expect a man to alter his character as soon as I feel I have money enough and want his company at home. Here we are as comfortable as can be, and in such a beautiful situation, good neighbours and good hunting, but he cannot stay here a month together, much as he cares for it and me, before he is as strung and twitchy as a rabbit smelling a fox. “John,” I say, when I see him gnawing his nails over the paper or standing up just to sit down again three times in a quarter of an hour, “you are a foolish old man and should learn to keep still, but I cannot change you, so off to Portugal with you. Send me long letters and I shall see you in six months.” Then he looks as delighted as a boy let off church, mumbles something about irrigation of the vines in the current season and away he goes.’

Harriet laughed. ‘And does he write you long letters?’

‘Oh, my dear, he does. So long I wonder he has any time to do his work at all. He is a fine man and I know I am blessed in him.’

Harriet was wondering as she spoke how she would describe Mrs Briggs in the letter to her sister she had half-formed in her head. The woman’s movements were birdlike in their quickness but so suffused with a lively good will that ‘birdlike’ would not quite do. Perhaps a magpie had that glint in its eye. She was still considering when she found Mrs Briggs was asking her a question.

‘But you were a traveller, were you not, Mrs Westerman, when you first married? Do you not miss the adventure of it, as my husband does when at home?’

It was the first time in years that anyone had had the perception to ask the question directly, and Harriet answered with immediate honesty. ‘Yes, I do. Very much. I think that is why I am here now.’

Mrs Briggs chuckled. ‘Indeed, that might well explain why you were so ready to uproot yourself and come charging up to visit us. Though do not mistake me, my dear.’ She looked suddenly nervous, her quick eyes searching Harriet’s face for any sign of offence. ‘I am only too glad to have you here. You seem just the sort of guest I like to have in my home, and the frank and open sort of person it is a pleasure to see every day.’ Though Harriet was smiling at her, thinking it impossible to be offended by Mrs Briggs, her hostess still seemed unsettled. ‘There I go, running on again and saying all sorts of things one should not say.’

‘Mrs Briggs! Why should you not say them? You are only far too kind to me, and I fear I shall disappoint you on further acquaintance.’

She beamed again. ‘I am sure you shall not.’ Then her face fell. ‘But not everyone is of your mind. The Vizegrafin seems to shudder every time I open my mouth. Then I become nervous and make everything worse. She makes me feel like the girl I was, with hardly a clean shawl to keep me decent. I was all charity school and rough hands in my youth, and I think the Vizegrafin can smell cheap soap on me still. My daughter is married to a Lord, and happily, and my son looks set to only add to the fortune he inherits, as he manages the business with his father now, bless them both — yet ladies like her can make me feel like hanging my head and slinking back to the scullery.’ Her shoulders slumped a little.

‘I am sorry to hear you say so,’ Harriet said, with a slight frown. ‘I imagined you and the Vizegrafin must be good friends for her to be staying here. She is not a comfortable person to dine with every day then, if I understand you?’

Mrs Briggs shook her head, her eyes still downcast. ‘To be frank with you, Mrs Westerman, I wonder why the woman ever came! Her son seems pleasant enough — I like him, in fact — though he becomes sulky whenever his mother is in the room. My son was the same at one time. But the Vizegrafin never seemed to like us a great deal when we met in Vienna. I invited her to come to Silverside, naturally, when we discovered our connection, but I never thought to hear from her after that. She seemed a little horrified to be associated with us. Then a year later a letter appears done up with as many seals as a quart of brandy — and there it is! She would be very glad to make a long visit if it were convenient and so on, then she followed on so swift after my reply she must have had her bags packed and the horse waiting at the door.’