Susie Read online

With the exception of Susie, the Burke household rejoiced that evening, and even the servants were allowed champagne.

  Chapter Three

  Dr. Burke ran after the departing carriage and threw an old shoe. “Just for luck,” he said, returning to his wife with a smile that did not meet his eyes. For Dr. and Mrs. Burke were a very worried couple. The marriage had not been what they had expected—not what they had expected at all.

  In the first place, that irritating vicar, Mr. Pontifax, had refused to perform the ceremony. The earl had said blithely that he knew a chap who knew a chap who knew a priest in the City who would cheerfully do the business. Susie had meekly accepted his proposal in the presence of her parents. The earl had kissed her on the cheek and had then departed for his home in the country, informing the Burkes blithely that he would “see them on the day.” Startled, Dr. Burke had asked what they were to do about the wedding rehearsal. No problem, the cheerful earl had said. He himself knew the ropes, having been at the altar three times before, but he would get the priest-chappie to pop down on the day before to tell Susie what she should do.

  Snobbery and ambition, however, soon closed in to banish Dr. Burke and his wife’s fears. Their neighbors were most terribly impressed, and that mattered more than the carping criticisms of Mr. Pontifax, who, after all, was the sort who believed that washerwomen had a right to the best seats in Heaven.

  Although Harrods could have supplied a trousseau for just over seven pounds, Mrs. Burke insisted on ordering one from Debenhams for one hundred pounds. This included fifteen chemises, twelve camisoles, eight pairs of combinations, seventeen pairs of knickers, seventeen petticoats, a dozen nightdresses, two dressing gowns, dressing jackets and boudoir caps, two dozen handkerchiefs, a nightdress case, and three dozen of something referred to in a discreet whisper as “diaper towels.”

  Susie’s wedding outfit was a green velvet suit, generously trimmed with fox fur and with an enormous fox fur hat and muff to match.

  The “priest-chappie” duly appeared on the afternoon of the day before the wedding, exuding piety and a strong odor of gin. Susie carefully memorized her responses. She was thin and white-faced and living in a nightmare, but everyone put it down to premarital nerves with such force and vigor that Susie almost believed it herself.

  The actual day of the wedding was the first time that Dr. and Mrs. Burke actually saw the church of St. Jude’s. The day was steel-gray and blustery. The church crouched at the end of a small mean alley in one of the forgotten corners of the City of London. Inside, it smelled strongly of damp and disuse, old incense, paraffin, and gin.

  There was no organist at the organ, no choir in the choir stalls, and no flowers on the altar. The priest-chappie seemed in perpetual danger of falling down, and he scrambled through the wedding ceremony at a bewildering rate. There were no guests apart from a loud and tipsy best man called Harry Spots, who actually refreshed himself from a small silver flask before Mrs. Burke’s horrified eyes.

  The happy couple had finally driven off in the earl’s carriage, which was to take them to the station. Dr. and Mrs. Burke were left alone outside the church, unable to meet each other’s eyes. Mrs. Burke still clutched a bag of rose petals in her hands, and as her fingers twisted nervously at the paper, the rose petals began to escape one by one, flying off down the street before the winter gale, twisting and turning and rising up above the mean houses as if searching desperately for summer.

  “We have done our best for Susie,” said Mrs. Burke firmly. “She ought to be very grateful to us.” But her voice quavered and her eyes filled with tears. “I-I d-did think that Lord Blackhall would at least have allowed us t-to h-hold a w-wedding breakfast. Oh, dear, weddings always make me cry,” she added defiantly.

  Dr. Burke hailed a passing four-wheeler and held the door open for his wife. “Let’s go home,” he said heavily. “We shall feel much better when we’re home.”

  A small urchin with a face of ageless evil barred his way. “I say, guv,” said the boy. “Did yer see that old geezer what married that young bint? Cor! Some folk ud do anythink for money. That’s what my dad allus says.”

  Dr. Burke cuffed the urchin over the ear and climbed in beside his wife, who had begun to cry in earnest. Mrs. Burke longed to return to the cozy envy of her neighbors so that she might feel all right within herself again.

  Susie’s husband had mercifully fallen asleep in the corner of a compartment in his private railway carriage. Susie turned her white face to the window, where the smoke from the engine of the train billowed out over the rows of houses. “Can’t go back, never go back, can’t go back, never go back,” sang the wheels as they raced Susie out of London and across the winter countryside.

  Fine snow began to blow across the long black lines of hedges and leafless trees. Susie remembered her dream of the homely but kind reporter and tried to conjure up another fantasy. But reality was too much present in the heavy snoring face of her husband opposite. She had had one, just one splendid dream as she had been borne inexorably toward the church. That some kind but homely young man would leap from the pews like young Lochinvar and would bear her off to that magic cottage where the sun always shone and the birds always sang.

  But the priest had dribbled on with the service and only the wind sighing in the bells high above in the black steeple had rung out a faint, protesting peal.

  God does not exist, thought Susie miserably. I have done nothing, nothing in my life to deserve such a punishment as this. Her husband let out a gurgling snore, and a faint line of saliva dripped from his mouth and shone like a snail’s trail on his beefy chin.

  Susie had no idea what the intimacies of the marriage bed entailed. Her mind could not even begin to think how babies were conceived. It was something to do with a man kissing you and that was all she knew.

  Then as she stared at her husband an absolutely splendid and vivid fantasy began to take shape. He was very old, after all. He would slip in the snow as they left the train. He would fall under the train. She would cry out, of course, but no one would hear her. The wheels would slowly grind over his body, and she would scream and faint and be caught in the arms of the homely but kind young man who had happened to alight from the train at the same time. There would be shocked stories in the newspapers and pictures of her becomingly dressed in black. “Prostrate Widow…” She could see the headlines now.

  The funeral service would be very imposing. Would they bury him at Westminster Abbey? Yes, decided Susie, they would. And…and…what is more, King Edward would attend. He would press her hand and murmur that it was a tragedy that someone so beautiful should be widowed so young. She would be very rich and beautiful, and all the lords would be eager to marry her. But she would turn her back on them, for the homely young man was waiting at the cottage gate, a pipe clenched between his manly teeth and a dog called Rover gamboling at his heels. And…

  “Nearly there,” said the earl, rubbing the misted carriage window with his sleeve. “Won’t be long.”

  Susie stared at him in a state of shock. She had, after all, just buried him.

  “Can’t go back, never go back, can’t go back, never go back,” sang the pitiless wheels.

  The earl’s brougham was drawn up on the station platform to await them. Susie blinked a little at the glory of the equipage and the splendid uniforms of the two footmen and stately coachman. The earl’s town carriage had been downright shabby. Not only that, but the carriage he had promised to send to Camberwell to convey his bride and her parents to the church had never arrived and the anxious Burkes had had to hire a hansom.

  Admittedly the earl stumbled on the platform, and Susie’s heart leapt into her mouth, but he regained his balance and showed no signs of obliging her by toppling under the wheels of the train.

  “There’ll be a few of the family to meet you,” said the earl, “but don’t worry about ’em. They won’t interfere with our fun and games.” Although this last remark was accompanied by a leer, “fun and gam
es” to Susie’s innocent mind meant just that, and a little of her misery eased as she thought of possible charades and parlor games.

  The snow had slackened off, although a few frosty flakes still drifted down from the lowering sky. The well-sprung carriage bowled smoothly along a metalled road. A harsh, moaning cry came from above, and Susie, craning her neck at the carriage window, saw three sea gulls wheeling against the winter sky.

  “Are we near the sea?” she asked shyly.

  “Right on the edge of it,” said the earl.

  “I’ve never seen the sea before.”

  “Well, you’re going to see a lot of it now,” barked her husband. “And a lot of me, heh, heh, heh.”

  Susie cowered slightly away from him, and his eyes gleamed.

  “Here, give us a kiss,” he said thickly.

  Susie closed her eyes and submitted as his hot, wet mouth closed over her own. She felt she would suffocate; she felt she would be sick. At last he released her and looked at her with a grin. “You need a bit of warming up, my lass.” He grinned. “But plenty of time for that when we get home.”

  I think I might be able to put up with it, thought Susie wildly, if I just breathe through my nose and think of something else.

  The carriage rolled inexorably on through the snowy landscape.

  Susie had remained in a fairly numbed state all through the days before the wedding. She was a dutiful girl, and she knew she must obey her parents. She had been told from the day of her birth that they knew what was best for her, and she had obeyed them without question. But she was emerging from her numbed state with all the resilience of youth and beginning to feel many twinges of uncertainty and panic.

  She began to wonder whether her parents would actually have turned her out if she had rebelled against this marriage. She wondered uneasily whether she actually liked her parents, but this idea was so novel and so shocking that she quickly banished it.

  The carriage came to a stop before a pair of high wrought-iron gates. The snow had begun to fall again in blinding sheets.

  “Got here just in time,” muttered the earl. “We’ll soon be snowed in.”

  Susie could hardly see anything of her surroundings. They appeared to be making their way slowly up a long, narrow road that led through barren acres of grazing land.

  After what seemed an age, her husband said, “There’s Blackhall.”

  At that moment the snow thinned so that the castle seemed to leap out at them.

  If Susie had been a debutante of the earl’s class, she would certainly not have expected this grim medieval fortress with its high walls, drawbridge, and great rectangular keep of four stories, which seemed to stretch up to the very clouds. Very few of the aristocracy actually lived in castles these days, and if they did, they had certainly gone about modernizing them. To Susie, who only knew about castles from the illustrations in her school history books, it was more or less what she had expected, although when the great portcullis was lowered behind the carriage, she could not help wondering what kind of mentality it was that kept a medieval portcullis in working order.

  There was a moat as well, still filled with water. They clattered past the square, somber gatehouse and the bailey and across another drawbridge—over a dry ditch this time—and through another courtyard, swinging around in front of the keep.

  Susie felt she had left the modern world behind to enter an Old English world where the brutish face of her husband seemed entirely in place.

  The earl stamped the snow from his boots and led the way into a great dark hall hung with ancient banners and tapestries. A great fire, big enough to roast an ox in, blazed and crackled in an enormous stone fireplace.

  The servants were lined up in the hall to greet their new mistress. Susie kept her head down and murmured, “Pleased to meet you,” in a timid whisper that earned her the contempt of the servants.

  “That’s enough of that,” said the earl, pushing her away from the last servant. “Bring us something to drink. We’ll have it in the rose chamber. Is my mother there?”

  Susie felt a little breath of relief. His mother! She pictured a kindly white-haired lady who would look after her and perhaps talk gently to her in the evenings.

  The rose chamber bore witness to the Blackhall’s former allegiance to the Tudors, having faded red roses painted on its plastered walls. A stained-glass window set high up into the wall portrayed a particularly violent martyrdom in which a tanned saint in a bright blue robe was being burned to death at the stake amid a welter of crimson-red glass flames.

  What furniture there was belonged to the red plush, overstuffed variety, rather like the furniture in Susie’s home in Camberwell, and it looked very awkward in these austere surroundings, somewhat like a plump suburban family who had come on a sightseeing tour and had found themselves locked in for the night.

  A tall, gaunt, leathery woman who seemed to have been made out of whipcord and leather got to her feet at their entrance, and Susie was pushed forward and introduced. A pair of cold gray eyes stared down at Susie. This, then, was the earl’s mother, the Dowager Countess of Blackhall.

  She was wearing a mannish riding dress with a white stock. Her gray hair was pulled severely back, and her thin lips opened to reveal surprisingly bad teeth.

  “So you’re Susie,” said the senior Lady Blackhall.

  Susie dropped a curtsy. “I’m ever so pleased to meet you,” she whispered.

  “What’s this?” Her ladyship’s voice was like a whiplash. “This girl is common, Peter. Common as dirt. At least the other ones were all of your own class.” She waved her hand toward the wall behind her, and Susie found herself staring at the portraits of three young women.

  “Are they all dead?” she asked, surprise and fright making her bold.

  “Every single one of them,” said her ladyship with a certain amount of satisfaction. “I told ’em I’d outlive them all, and I did. Well, I shall just have to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Susie. When you have settled in, I shall begin your training and turn you into a lady if it takes all night and all day.”

  “Hey, not all night,” said the earl, leering.

  His mother killed him with a glance. “I hope you made it clear to this girl’s relatives, Peter, that she has got to have absolutely nothing to do with them from now on. Nip the suburban influence in the bud. You may call me Felicity, and I shall call you Susie, since I am as young in spirit as yourself. In fact, probably younger. Take off your wraps, girl, and warm yourself at the fire.”

  “Yes, Felicity,” said Susie meekly. This was going to be worse than school! She felt tears welling up behind her eyes and fought to keep them back.

  “It’s a very nice castle,” she ventured.

  “I suppose you mean ‘nice’ in the common way,” remarked Felicity. “Don’t use it again unless you mean precise, punctilious, or scrupulous. But since I gather you are trying to say that the castle is agreeable and delightful, then I take leave to inform you that you are wrong. It is damp, cold, drafty, and damned inconvenient. It is cold in winter and cold in summer. Fortunately, I am in excellent health and able to cope with its rigors. Many are not, which is probably why Peter’s last wives are now lying six feet under.”

  Susie fell silent. A burgeoning anger against the awful old autocrat was drying her tears.

  A servant entered, carrying a tray laden with bottles and glasses. “I suppose you drink port,” barked Felicity, motioning the servant to hand Susie a glass. Susie did not in fact drink anything stronger than lemonade but was frightened to say so.

  Peter, Earl of Blackhall, and his mother fell to talking about people that Susie did not know, and she was left peacefully to sip her wine and study her three predecessors, who seemed to look down on her sadly from their heavy gilt frames.

  Felicity finally turned her attention back to Susie. “You had better go to your rooms and change for dinner. The housekeeper will show you the way.” She rang the bell, tugging at a frayed bell
rope on the wall.

  Susie followed the housekeeper up the long, winding stone stair and felt alamost out of breath by the time they finally came to a halt. The bedrooms were obviously at the top of the keep.

  The housekeeper, a plump, motherly snob called Mrs. Wight, pushed open a stout oak door. Susie was ushered in and then left to examine her new quarters. She was to learn that, apart from the hall, the rose chamber was about the biggest room in the castle. She found herself standing in a small, stuffy sitting room that led to a larger, freezing bedroom. In the bedroom a fairly big window had been let into the wall and was wide open, showing the snow drifting past outside. Susie crossed over and looked out, hoping for a glimpse of the sea, but found herself looking straight down into the bleak square of the inner courtyard. She shivered and tried to pull the window closed, but it would not budge. What on earth happens when the wind is on this side of the keep? she wondered.

  A door from the bedroom led to a small suite of rooms belonging to her husband. She retreated back to her sitting room, closing the door between it and the bedroom to shut off the blast of freezing air from the open window. She wanted to wash her face and hands, but the washstand and water cans were in the bedroom, and the water was probably frozen solid. Suddenly the fact that her husband had his own suite of rooms seemed to her infinitely heartening. Her parents shared a bed, that she knew. But now it seemed as if she would have her privacy. A cheerful coal fire crackled on the hearth, and a rose-shaded oil lamp gave the room an illusion of femininity and friendliness. There were old piles of romances on the shelves, unfinished embroidery in the workbox, and an old doll lying abandoned in the corner.

  Who had owned the doll? No child, surely. Perhaps one of the wives who had brought this comfort from her childhood days to this bleak castle.

  Susie shivered and decided to change for dinner. Her clothes had already all been put away, no doubt by the efficient Mrs. Wight and her maids.

  There was a scratching at the door, and a severe-looking, angular woman in a black silk dress entered. Susie arose and dropped her a curtsy, which brought a thin smile to this lady’s lips.