Rosie Thomas - All My Sins Remembered

Mary was kind-hearted and generous, and she began to invite her young cousin to accompany Norton and herself on their weekend visits. Constance was glad to let her go, and there could be no objection to Eleanor making excursions in the company of her older married cousin.

The Souls were sophisticated and under-occupied. Once their conventional marriages had set them free, they were at liberty to wander within the limits of their miniature world and amuse themselves by falling in and out of love with one another. Most of them had one or two young children. They had done their family duty, and they left their heirs at home in their nurseries while they travelled to one another’s houses to play, and to talk, and to pursue their romantic interests. At night the corridors of the old houses whispered with footsteps. The mute family portraits looked down on the secret transpositions.

There was one house in a village near Oxford that Eleanor liked particularly. It was an ancient grey stone house, set in a beautiful walled garden. Eleanor liked to wander on her own along the stone paths, breathing in the scents and bending down to examine a leaf or a tiny flower beside her shoe. At Fernhaugh she was perfectly happy to leave the Souls to their books and their mysterious murmurings, and to enjoy herself amongst the plants.

She was, she told herself with a touch of mournful pride, learning to be by herself. And at the same time she wondered if she could persuade Blanche to begin the creation of a garden like this somewhere in the Capability Brown park at Stretton.

One Sunday morning at Fernhaugh Eleanor was walking in the garden. There had been rain overnight and the perfume was intensified by the damp air. She knew that some of the house party had dutifully gone to church to hear their host reading the lesson, but that most of the Souls were not yet downstairs. There were guests expected for luncheon, but the drawing room with the French windows looking out on the terrace was still empty. Even the gardeners would not appear today. The green enclosure in all its glory was hers alone.

Eleanor wandered, breathing in the richness, letting her fingers trail over dewy leaves and fat, fleshy petals. She felt for a moment as if she might at last aspire to the sensuous abandon of the real Souls. She let her eyes close, feeling the garden absorb her into its green heart.

From close at hand, too close, an unfamiliar voice asked, ‘Are you all right?’

Eleanor’s 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?