Fraser jumps in knowledgeably. ‘Fine houses. Quite like Bloomsbury,’ he assures her.
When the colonel goes to his cabin, Johnathan kisses Araminta’s shoulder. ‘He’ll settle down,’ he says. On deck they take in the view of the dock. It’s a fine winter morning with a clear blue sky. ‘Such industry,’ Johnathan exclaims cheerfully and pulls a small box from his pocket with a flourish. ‘I bought this as a birthday gift but perhaps it’ll find its best use while you’re in the north.’
He waits for her to open it, observing her expression. Inside is a small, silver-backed notebook with a pencil that slips into the spine and a tiny silver knife with which to sharpen the lead.
‘It’s lovely,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’
She kisses his cheek and nuzzles into him. ‘We’ve never been apart. Not since our wedding day,’ she adds, hoping that he might reconsider, but instead he whispers in her ear that he’ll miss her, then mumbles something about a committee on the matter of igneous rock.
She watches from the deck as the carriage trundles away and Johnathan is gone. The sailors cast off and the ship makes way along the channel between Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs and smartly onwards down the busy estuary past Gravesend. Gulls wheel overhead as Araminta takes the air, watching paupers mudlark on the shore and men fish off tiny boats at Chatham. It’s mild for February with little by way of a breeze even though, aided by the tide, they are now making way at a speed of nine knots. She casts her mind back to the schoolroom in Mary-le-Bone where she learned a poem by Robert Burns and was surprised by the rhythm his words stirred in her.
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or, like the snow-fall in the river,
A moment white, then melts forever.
She wonders if her mother knew this poem. Perhaps her great aunt will be able to say. At twenty she would have been excited to receive the letter that now sits in her pocket. Somehow, she realises, she’s changed. Marriage. Richmond. Love, perhaps. For a moment she inhabits the mind of her younger self, a hazel-eyed schoolgirl who solved word puzzles of a Sunday and on weekdays felt the satisfaction of algebraic calculations.
‘All right,’ she says under her breath. ‘I’ll take Mr Burns’ advice. I shall find what I can without grasping for it.’
Eleanor loitering nearby and with more understanding than Mr Moore, can see her mistress is in need of reassurance. ‘I’m sure it’ll be all right, madam,’ she says. ‘Plain sailing.’
Chapter Two
It feels odd to stand steady three days later when they dock at Leith, disembarking to a party of smart soldiers come to greet the colonel. In high spirits, the men sing a ditty about the Midlothian Boys, by which, Araminta surmises, they mean their own regiment. There’s something alarming in the third verse about beheading Irish rebels. The February weather after a choppy few days on the water seems settled but biting-cold, far worse than London, though Araminta comforts herself both cities lie under the same bright winter sky. The journey has felt long, due in part to the weather but also to the company. The captain, a thin, capable man from Liverpool, allowed the colonel to run on each night at dinner. ‘Edinburgh Castle is not open to the public,’ Fraser announced. ‘Yet the sheer volume of requests to visit the place has become overwhelming, tourists arriving in the Scottish capital in increasing numbers.’ It transpired that tour guides have lobbied the colonel for open afternoons when they might bring any Tom, Dick or Harry to gawp at the battlements. Foreigners included. Fraser has naturally resisted. Edinburgh Castle is a military installation.
‘You of course, madam, are not a tourist,’ he allowed Araminta with a gentlemanly flourish.
One morning she caught him tarrying with Eleanor outside her cabin door, when the girl was fetching a breakfast tray from the galley. Araminta, barefoot, declared, ‘I’m seasick, Eleanor.’ A lie. ‘I need you.’ Then once the maid was inside: ‘What did the colonel want?’
Eleanor was forthright as ever. ‘Nothing, ma’am. He asked where I was from.’ Her soft green eyes were clear.
‘Did you tell him?’ Araminta enquired.
‘Yes, ma’am. I don’t think he meant anything by it. He’s never visited Wimbledon but seemed set to talk about how he had never been there, nonetheless.’
The women laughed. The unwanted attention of gentlemen has not yet come up in the three years the maid has been in Araminta’s employ, but both women are aware that gentlemen sometimes take their chances and that it does not generally work out well for young women in service. Araminta felt glad the girl was billeted in her cabin, sleeping in a hammock strung between the beams.
Now, along the dock at Leith the cobblestones are bound by icy puddles that catch the sunlight like intricate mirrors. Araminta turns up the collar of her sober, chocolate-brown overcoat and flexes her fingers inside oxblood leather gloves. Eleanor has wrapped an extra dun woollen half-blanket over her shoulders. Having extracted themselves from the colonel’s repeated offers of help, the women travel in a hired carriage up Leith Walk, past cottages where snowy washing hanging on line after line looks as if it is frozen stiff. At a church at the entrance to the city, two pink-faced young ministers, one very thin and one very fat, argue as they push past each other into a carriage. From a distance they remind Araminta of crows squabbling over scraps in Richmond Park. Continuing through the New Town, Eleanor squeals, ‘Oh look, ma’am,’ as she catches a glimpse of the castle, perched impressively on a craggy lump of volcanic rock that makes an incongruous backdrop to the pale sandstone townhouses built in a pleasingly regular grid according to Mr James Craig’s design. Sweeping past the elegant Robert Adam façades on Charlotte Square and down a steep hill on the far side, the carriage pulls up at number four Glenfinlas Street. The townhouses here run to five storeys, which Araminta thinks is a lot for one old lady to keep up and she not in goodhealth. Eleanor supervises the coachman unloading the luggage as Araminta climbs the four shallow stone steps that lead to the front door. She lets out a sigh, her breath clouding, and wonders if she is in time, envisioning a tiny, exhausted, grey woman, skin and bone on her deathbed, waiting for the great niece she has never met before she can be at peace.
She rings the brass bell and the door is opened by a butler who is unaccountably tall, with fading ginger hair and bright eyes.
‘My name is Araminta McKenzie Moore,’ she starts, unsure how to explain.
‘Ah yes,’ the man cuts in. He clicks his fingers and a smartly dressed footman appears. ‘Douglas will fetch the bags,’ he says. ‘Please come in, Mrs Moore. Miss McKenzie is waiting.’
The hallway is painted pale green and there’s a large gold-foiled mirror beside the front door next to a substantial statue of Apollo in pristine white marble and a coat of arms mounted on the wall. Araminta cocks her head. The motto above the arms is written in some foreign language. Not Latin. Nor English either.
‘I’m Brodie,’ the butler introduces himself, as he takes her coat.
Araminta’s fingers feel weak. The hallway smells of tea leaves and brass polish. On an oak table there is a porcelain vase of surprisingly early daffodils, which must have been brought on in a greenhouse. Even in Richmond the snowdrops are scarcely out.
‘Miss McKenzie is in the drawing room,’ Brodie says and leads the way up the thickly carpeted stone stair. On the landing they pass a wide window of old-fashioned leaded glass that distorts the view of a garden with a low mews beyond. Araminta can just make out a fat white gull with a vivid-orange beak perched on a neighbouring roof.
‘How is my great aunt’s health?’ Araminta asks. She has helped to nurse two mortally afflicted neighbours in her time.One before her marriage and one afterwards. Their ends were slow but peaceful, sleep taking the last rattling breath. She’s not afraid of death, but still.
