Valhalla by Alan Robert Clark

Author:Alan Robert Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairlight Books
Published: 2020-07-14T13:17:59+00:00

XX

Autumn, 1893

‘Jesus Christ!’

From downstairs, there is another slamming of another door. It is loud enough to shiver the petals of the roses atop her Sheraton cabinet. It shivers May Teck too and she steels herself for the marching feet along the landing. But they do not come. There are no more blasphemies. After the slam, there is silence in the house. The usual sounds of pots and pans crashing in the kitchen, of a footman whistling as he polishes in the boot room, even of the horses in the stables, are gone. The captain of the ship is in a temper and the crew creep around him on tiptoe.

She does not go down to luncheon. Pilgrim offers to serve something light in her room, perhaps just a little cold chicken. Do eat something, Ma’am, the girl entreats her, but she cannot. She lights one cigarette after another. All afternoon, she sits staring out at the drizzle, dozing a little or trying to read the latest book Madame Bricka has sent her. A new novel by Mr Gissing about two sisters made impecunious by the death of their father. One of them, wanting to find independence in a cold hard world, takes genteel but hateful employment, while the other, terrified of any such thing, flees into the security of marriage with an uncongenial man. May almost smiles. Oh dear, how unsubtle the clever-clogs Bricka can be sometimes. But try as she might, she cannot advance past the first few chapters.

Towards evening, the drizzle stops and she flings open the window. The weakening sun appears from beneath the skirts of the cumulus, spreading a tawny light across sodden grass of the garden and the flat fields beyond the fence. She inhales the smell of the earth as it dries out, the same smell she knows from her bedroom window at home. She closes her eyes and tries to pretend she is back there. When she opens them, she prays she will see the view straight down Queen’s Ride into the very heart of the park and glimpse the sheath of Pen Ponds through the trees. She will see her brothers striding off with their fishing rods. She will see the familiar pathways through the ferns and the bracken, on which she could find her way even on a moonless night.

A knock on the door compels her to open her eyes to her new reality. A note is delivered on a silver salver.

‘I shall expect you at dinner,’ it says.

And so she bathes and changes and goes down the narrow staircase. To her surprise, the dining room is exactly as she left it. If she catches his eye, he looks away. They eat without a single word until the arrival of the peaches and cream. Good simple food, that’s what he likes. Nothing fancy. Like he and Eddy used to get on the ship that took them round the world for three whole years. To this day, he likes to make his mother and sisters laugh by tapping biscuits against the table to check for weevils.

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