The Essex Serpent(31)
There was a flurry of greeting, in which Cora – glad for once to be forgotten – watched Martha and the girl absorbed in a game of patience. ‘The queen is in her counting-house,’ said Joanna, and dealt another card. Then the brief peace broke, and the little crowd came in; Charles and Katherine embraced Cora, patting her cheek and exclaiming at the beauty of her dress, and the absence of mud on her shoes. Was she well? Look at her hair, so clean and shining! And there was Martha, and what were her latest schemes, they wondered? And Frankie: did he take well to the country air? What of the sea-dragon – was Cora at last to see her name in the pages of The Times? And did they not love Stella already, and what did she make of the good Reverend Will?
At this, a deep quiet voice said – with good humour, but (thought Cora) a decided lack of enthusiasm: ‘I’ve yet to meet our guests – Charles, you blind me with your glory, and nothing else can be seen.’ Charles Ambrose stood aside, and raising an arm conducted their host to the couch where Cora sat. She saw, above the open neck of a black shirt, a mouth pressed into a smile, eyes with the grain of polished oak, and a cheek which seemed to have been badly nicked while shaving. In all her long years of society life, she had prided herself on an astute assessment of the status and character of those she met: here the wealthy businessman embarrassed by his own success, there the shabby Lady with a van Dyck on the staircase. But here was a man who’d not be categorised, however long she stared at the high polish on his shoes and the sleeves which pulled a little at the bulk of his arm: he was too burly for a desk-bound parson, but his gaze too thoughtful to be that of a man content with farming; his smile was too polite for sincerity, but his eyes glittered with good humour; his voice (and had she heard it before, on the Colchester streets perhaps, or on the London train?) had in it an echo of Essex, but he spoke like a scholar. She stood, and with all the graciousness she could muster while her stomach still turned with the scent of the lilies, held out her hand.
Will, for his part, saw a tall handsome woman whose fine nose was specked with freckles, and whose mossy dress (its value, he rightly guessed, twice that of Stella’s entire wardrobe) drew out a greenish cast in eyes which were largely grey. She’d wound a scrap of gauzy fabric around her throat (absurd: did she really think it would keep her warm?), and wore on her wedding finger a diamond which broke the light and threw it against the wall. Despite the grandeur of her clothes, there was something boyish about her: she wore no jewellery aside from the ring, and her face had not been powdered pale, but glowed where the briny Essex air had struck it. When she stood, he saw that she was not the carthorse his daughter had prophesied, but nor was she slender: she was large, and had substance; her presence would be, he thought, impossible to ignore, however hard one tried.
Whether it was the motion she made as she raised her hand or the realisation that her height matched his completely he was never sure, but at that moment he knew her at once. She was the roaring harridan who’d plunged out of the mist that day on the Colchester road, when together they’d tugged the sheep from its muddy trap and he’d received the cut on his cheek. She did not recognise him, of that he was certain: her smile was warm, though perhaps a little condescending. The pause before he took her hand was surely too brief to have been noticed by their companions, but caused her to look more keenly at her host. Will, who had not ceased laughing at the memory of that absurd encounter by the lake since the night he returned home in his coat of mud, could no longer conceal his amusement, and began to laugh again, touching lightly the reddish mark the animal had made.
Cora, so swift to assess the shifting moods of those around her, was briefly thrown: he put his hand in hers, and it was perhaps something in the pressure of his grasp that caused her to look again at the position of the cut on his cheek, and the curls on his collar, and with a gasp – ‘Oh! You!’ – begin laughing too. Martha (watching the exchange with a sensation very like fear) saw her friend and their host each cling to the hand of the other, helpless with inexplicable merriment. Cora, mindful of her manners, tried now and then to contain herself and explain to a bewildered Stella what it was that had struck them with laughing-sickness, but she could not. It was Will, at last, who released her hand, and giving an ironic bow – one leg extended, as if in the court of the queen – said, ‘I’m so pleased to meet you, Mrs Seaborne: might I offer you a drink?’
Composing herself, she said, ‘I’d very much like another glass of wine; and have you met my Martha? I never travel anywhere without her.’ This effort of manners proved too much: she pressed her lips together to prevent another gale of laughter, then said gently, ‘I do feel rather sheepish,’ and watched, delighted, as the man could not help another gleeful burst.
Stella – amused, but never keen to feel outside events – said: ‘I take it you’ve met?’
Her voice sobered Will, who drew her towards Cora and said, ‘You remember, the week before last, how I came home late, covered in mud, because I’d pulled a sheep from the lake, and how a strange woman helped me? Well: here she is.’ He turned to Cora, and said with sudden seriousness: ‘I feel I should apologise: I’m sure I was rude, and I don’t know what I would have done without you.’
‘You were monstrous,’ said Cora, ‘but you’ve provided so much entertainment for my friends that I forgive you completely – and here’s Martha, and she won’t believe me that I thought you a creature that had climbed out of the mud and would certainly climb back into it. Martha, meet the Reverend William Ransome; Mr Ransome: my friend.’ She put her arm round Martha’s waist, feeling a sudden need to tether herself to what was familiar, and saw her friend give the parson a swift appraising glance which almost certainly found him wanting.