Eve of the Ball

We returned from Flory yesterday, to find everything at the Macauley house in a state of chaos. Well, not quite everything perhaps: Tomek and his team have wrought wonders in the Orangery, where a thousand coloured lights bounce down upon the newly laid floor, and the caterers and florists come and go already, unloading gilded chairs and tables, and filling the air with the headiness of rose, and orange blossom, and jasmine. No, the chaos is largely in my own head, I think – though a good deal, too, in the steady stream of solemnly suited men who have been coming and going all day to consult with Lady Macauley; and in the fact that Roland Baines, who has remained closeted with them almost constantly, is looking even more than usually portentous. Something is very definitely ‘in the air’; and Pamela, who alone among us all must have an inkling of what it is - Pamela is keeping her own counsel with surprising rectitude.

Jack and Alice had remained at Flory until this evening, which made things a little easier for us here; since young Will seems to have no other occupation at present than to drift rather unhappily about the house in the wake of Imogen Porteous - who herself, though still busy with her restoration work, and plying her needle with what seems to be a remarkably steady hand, has nonetheless the look about her of a girl who nurses a lovely secret, which she is resolved for the moment to keep strictly to herself.

I had been personally requested by Alice before we left, to ‘tackle Will’. “Find out what he’s been up to if you can, and report back’ was her brief to me; and though it’s perfectly clear that what he’s been ‘up to’, has been to fall headlong in love with Imogen, and almost certainly to have pledged that emotion with more than just a snatched embrace or two, in corners of the house ... though it’s clear as day that those two have arrived at an understanding with one another, yet off Will went at two o’clock this afternoon just the same; to keep an assignation with Angelica that ‘for the life of him’, as he put it to me with woeful countenance, he didn’t see how he could possibly break. “She has been buying a dress for the ball and all that kind of thing” he explained. “And I’m sure her mother has too. They’ve gone to no end of trouble and expense - I’d have to be the very worst sort of brute to desert them now.”

It is my fate of course as narrator of these events, to be relating them always in retrospect. I have often felt the disadvantage of this – though never quite so acutely as I do today, when things have moved at such speed, and so unpredictably, that I haven’t yet managed to come properly to grips with any of them. It’s late evening now, and I am back in the gatehouse, alone with my disordered thoughts. I have not yet had heart or opportunity to phone Alice with any kind of report of Will. What could I have told her indeed, save that he has apparently fallen hopelessly in love with one girl, only to feel himself still inextricably linked with another? That even loving Imogen as he does, he still seems likely to be dragooned into announcing his engagement to Angelica, tomorrow at the ball – could I have told his mother that? No, decidedly I could not. Nor have I - events having since then taken such a turn in other directions anyway, as to put possible engagement announcements entirely out of my head.

What happened in fact, was that at four o’clock this afternoon, Lady Macauley summoned the three of us, Belle and Bill and me, to her rooms; where, having seen off the last of the solemnly suited men, and in presence only of a still more solemnly visaged Roland Baines, she announced to us that she was in a position at last to reveal what she had been doing all day; to explain, in short, the arrangements she had just now put in place for securing the house against what she called ‘possible predators in the future’.

“I have been in consultation all this day” she told us – and it may have been my imagination, but it seemed to me she suppressed a tear with difficulty as she spoke; ”with representatives from the National Trust. I should perhaps have consulted first with you, who are nearest and dearest to me, but it seemed better this way.... You will understand why I have felt it necessary to act, and will have no objection, I’m sure – when you hear that what I have done this afternoon is simply to have signed the papers which will put in motion the procedure by which the house and all its contents will pass – well, to the Nation you know, on my death. Please try not to be shocked – it is something that has been in my mind for many years. It has always seemed to me that the house was Jack’s, and mine therefore, only because of him - and that when we are both gone, so will the spirit of the place have departed too; and it will be better that someone else should have the responsibilty of deciding its future....”

To say that we were stunned by this announcement, is not to come even near to what we actually experienced at that moment. Belle I think, was stricken with twenty painful emotions all at once – and Bill was silent too, for simple want of knowing what to say. Yet scarcely had we even tried to absorb its import - and then listened for another five minutes to Roland, who was deputed to explain to us the corollary facts, which seemed to have to do with accompanying bequests to the Trust for future upkeep, and the provision of a residual family interest, which would enable ‘Jack Macauley or his legatee’ (whom we understood to be Will), to continue to inhabit a part of the house... Hardly had we time to take in any of this, before Lady Macauley’s mood took a sudden swing in another direction; and she told us, with tears falling freely this time, that though the hour was late, and darkness had already fallen, she would like, if we would be so kind as to assist her, to visit her husband’s grave, for the purpose of explaining to him why she had acted in the way she had just done.

It was a strange, sad, silent and bewildered group, who made the short car journey to the cold little nearby churchyard, where Jack Macauley had lain buried for more than twenty five years. Lady Macauley had visited his grave before of course; had come there regularly every month in fact – but never before so impulsively, or in such strange conditions as these. We three stood back in darkness, holding a torch for her while she made her murmured explanation over the grave of her beloved Jack. She took full ten minutes over it; and looked close to death herself, when finally she had said all she wished, and we were able to lead her, weeping and shivering, back to the waiting car. Strangely too, her mood on the way home suddenly lightened; she became almost buoyant again, and was able to tell us, smiling now, that she was quite sure Jack would have approved of what she had done.

“He’ll have seen the need” she said. “He always saw the need of things, when once I’d been able to explain them to him. He was very fond of Rose – but he wouldn’t have liked her for what she is trying to do now.”

We passed a rather pleasant evening after that. Lady Macauley was in better spirits than we have seen her for many days; we enjoyed a rather splendid meal, which she gaily described as an eve-of-the ball event. And even Alice, who had returned with Jack from Flory while we were in the churchyard, and had been told nothing yet about the day’s events - even Alice was unable to spoil the mood, with her constantly reiterated anxieties over Will.

I returned home an hour ago; it is almost midnight now, and the day of the ball will shortly dawn. I have tried and tried to foresee what will happen there – whether Will Macauley will end the night with this girl or that, or neither; and what Rose will do, and if there will be an ugly scene....?

But just for the moment I give it up. I leave it in the lap of the gods, as the saying goes, and shall go gladly to my rest.