Cora said, tentatively: ‘Besides, he’ll be sleeping by now, don’t you think? And he’s so cross when he’s woken …’ Complicit, they headed across wet pavements made bright by a low sun, and had reached the awning’s shade when Cora heard a familiar voice.
‘Mrs Seaborne, I declare!’ She peered into the dim street and said, ‘Has someone seen us?’
Martha, resentful of further intruders on their time, tugged at the strap of her bag. ‘Who can know you here? We’ve been here less than a week: can’t you ever just be overlooked?’
The voice came again – ‘Cora Seaborne, as I live and breathe and have my being!’ – and with a cry of delight she plunged onto the pavement and raised her arm. ‘Charles! Come over! Come over and see me!’ Coming towards her beneath a pair of umbrellas so large they commandeered the street, Charles and Katherine Ambrose were an unlikely sight. Once a colleague of Michael Seaborne – undertaking one of the many Whitehall roles Cora was never able to fathom, and which seemed to entail twice the politician’s power with none of the responsibility – Charles had become a regular feature of Foulis Street life. The brightness of his waistcoats, and his insatiable appetite for all things, shielded a shrewdness which went undetected by most; that Cora had picked it out on first meeting had made him more or less her slave. Perhaps surprisingly, he was entirely devoted to his wife, who was diminutive where he was large, and who found him ceaselessly amusing. The pair of them were generous, benevolent, and interested in the lives of others; when they’d insisted that no doctor but Garrett would do for the ailing Seaborne, it had seemed impossible to refuse.
Cora gave her companion’s waist a mollifying squeeze. ‘You know I’d rather it was just you and me and our books. But it’s Charles and Katherine Ambrose: you met them, and liked them – no: really, you did! – Charles!’ Cora made a deep ironic curtsey, which might have been elegant if the toe she extended hadn’t been concealed in a man’s boot mottled with mud. ‘You know Martha, of course?’ Beside her, Martha unfurled to her full height and gave an unwelcoming nod. ‘And Katherine, too – I’d no idea you knew England extended past Palmer’s Green: are you lost? Can I lend you my map?’ Charles Ambrose looked with disgust at the muddy boot, and the Harris tweed coat which was cut too broad across the shoulders, and the strong hands with their bitten nails.
‘I would tell you it’s a pleasure to see you, though I never saw anyone look more like a barbarian queen bent on pillage: is it necessary to emulate the Iceni just because you’re on their turf?’ Cora – who refused to wear anything that might restrict her waist, who’d raked her hands through her hair and stuffed it into a hat, who hadn’t worn jewellery since she tugged the pearls from her ears a month before – was not offended. ‘Boudicca would be ashamed to be seen like this, I’m sure. Shall we go in, and have coffee, and wait for the clouds to break? You’re pretty enough for the pair of us.’ She tucked her hand in the crook of Katherine Ambrose’s elbow, and they winked at each other, and watched Charles’s velvet back make an impressive entrance into the cafe.
‘But how, actually, are you, Cora?’ Katherine paused at the threshold, and taking the younger woman’s face between her palms, turned it to the light. She surveyed the high-boned face, and the eyes which were like slate. Cora didn’t answer, because she was afraid to betray her shameful happiness. Katherine, who’d suspected more of Michael Seaborne’s dealings with his wife than Cora ever guessed, found her answer, and stood on tip-toe to plant a kiss on her temple. Behind them, Martha feigned a cough; Cora turned, stooped to pick up her canvas holdall, and whispering ‘Just another half-hour, I promise …’ hustled her companion inside.
‘Well: what are you doing here? I associate you both so much with Whitehall and Kensington that I supposed I imagined you evaporating at the borders of town!’ Cora surveyed the table with satisfaction. Charles commanded an awestruck girl in a white apron to bring at least a dozen of the cakes she personally liked best, and a gallon of tea. She evidently favoured coconut: there were macaroons, and speckled shortbread, and lozenges of cake doused in raspberry jam and rolled in coconut flakes. Cora, who’d walked several miles that morning, placidly ate her way towards a centrepiece of madeleines.
‘Yes,’ said Martha, with a glint of steel she intended to be seen: ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Visiting friends,’ said Katherine Ambrose. She shrugged neatly out of her little coat, and gazed about the dim, fragrant interior with an air of wonder. Something in the green tasselled cloth that fell into their laps evidently amused her; she fondled it, suppressed a smile, and said: ‘Why else would anyone come? There’s no shopping to be done, not one department store. Where do the locals get their wine and cheese?’
‘The vineyard and the cowshed, I imagine.’ Charles handed his wife a plate on which he had set a small cake vivid with icing. She’d never been seen to eat cake, but he liked now and then to play the tempter. ‘We’re trying to persuade Colonel Howard to stand for Parliament next election. He’s due to retire, and …’
‘… and is Really Good News,’ finished Cora, serving Charles one of his own well-worn phrases. Beside her, Martha had grown a little tense, possibly preparing for one of her diatribes on public health, or the need for housing reform. (Wrapped in a blue paper bag, tucked in the canvas holdall, was an American novel that described in the most approving terms a future utopia of communal city living. Martha had waited weeks for its English publication, and was impatient to get home and make a study of it.) Cora, though appreciative of her friend’s tender conscience, was too weary to watch battle commence over the teacups. She added a madeleine to Katherine’s plate, but it was pushed away and replaced with the map Martha had placed on the tablecloth.
‘May I?’ Katherine unfolded its pages until Colchester appeared in black-and-white, with sites of interest marked approvingly and illustrated with photographs. Cora had ringed the Castle Museum, and a tea-stain blotted the spire of St Nicholas.
‘Yes,’ said Katherine. ‘We thought we’d get to the Colonel before the others do: he’s made no secret of his ambitions, but never lets on in which direction they lie. I think Charles convinced him there’ll be a change of government next election; says we must all lay money on it. The old boy’s got the strength of a man half his age and is stubborn to boot: we might see the oldest Prime Minister yet.’ It was not necessary for her to name Gladstone, who was to the Ambrose family a combination of eccentric saint and beloved relation. Cora had once met him – she standing rigid at her husband’s side as his sharp-tipped fingers perforated the flesh on her upper arm, Gladstone a touch stooped as he greeted a procession of guests – and been startled by the savage intelligence blazing beneath eyebrows that cried out for a pair of scissors. It had been evident, from the ice that had entered his voice as he greeted Michael Seaborne, that the statesman had loathed her husband with an implacable hatred, and though Gladstone’s greeting to her had been correspondingly chill, she had always felt, in the years that followed, as if he were an ally.
Martha said, ‘Still gadding about with hookers, is he?’ doing her best to disgrace herself; but Charles was beneath being shocked and grinned over the rim of his teacup.