Corrupted Youth

The body lay on the chaise in the white framed summer house, alabaster skin as smooth as the marble Venus who gazed unfeeling upon the woman’s beauty, her equal for now, though beneath that skin the cells had started to consume themselves. Supine, draped in a Chinese silk robe, and framed by palm and fig leaves, drooping in the heat, she could have been sleeping, but then a fly landed upon her cheek, and remained, unswatted, hopeful. Beyond the glass paned walls, the bees went about their business, humming steadily amidst the brazen red of poppies and the white lace parasols of hemlock along the footpath separating the garden from the meadow beyond, and the birds called across the browning lawn to their brethren, perched on the parapet of the house. It had been a quiet death, at the end, and only the dead woman had been perturbed by her passing.

*

Virginia Percy had it all, which is too much for most people. Perhaps things may have been different if her father had survived. Or had died when Virginia was just an infant. That kind of inheritance can set a young woman on a troubled path, and like Cleopatra in her milk baths, Virginia immersed herself in trouble, growing more beautiful with every wounded heart. The week she died had been uncommon only in that it had been uncommonly hot. The horses had stood listless under the trees in the meadow, and the party, who had planned to ride, gathered instead around the new swimming pool Virginia had had installed in place of the rose garden, circled in green hedging and tiled in brilliant blue. Jack had been glad. He didn’t like to see the horses worked too hard in this kind of heat, and though it wasn’t his look out anymore, he still cared about the animals. Once head groom, always head groom, though he had passed those duties to young Mark as soon as the boy was of age. He had raised the child under the horses’ feet after his mother passed away, and his son had a feel for the work, and loved those horses like his brothers and sisters. Some thought it odd, that he would work under his own son, just 17 years old, too, but Jack paid no mind to what others thought. He had been with the Percy family for 35 years, since Virginia was just a baby, and despised most of them, but he was loyal to the horses, and he could see potential for his son to make a name for himself with the right opportunities.

Edward had been there of course, at the pool, his brash friends in tow. Tight bathing suits, and no qualms about the women looking. Not that Virginia had any reservations there, either, and Jack had seen poor Mark flush and keep his eyes lowered when he was called upon to net a newt found trapped and desperate, swimming widths. Mark was not the only one to notice the lines of Virginia’s body though. Eugene and his wife, Beatrice, both seemed rapt, and only little Elizabeth, brought out on her older sister’s hip to parade her ringlets for the crowd, seemed to detract attention from her mother’s breasts. Robert sat away from the others in the shade, his own guests in shirts and summer dresses, and though the invitations had been shared, the separation of the two parties could not be disguised. Not that there was any need. Everyone knew that Robert and Virginia had separated, and though divorce had not been mentioned, it seemed a matter of time. If Virginia inviting her lover embarrassed Robert, he didn’t show it, and besides, it was common knowledge that Robert himself was no model of marital fidelity.

Though gossip was rife, Virginia made no effort to hide Edward’s frequent presence, flanked more often than not by an unpredictable parade of acquaintances, at Hollbrook House. Jack wondered if he may be almost the only person who knew about Eugene however. The doctor had been prescribing for Virginia since the Dangerous Drugs Act had shored up the temporary restrictions of the war and left Virginia in need of a pliable medic to maintain her supply. She paid him well, and offered a little extra on the side to sweeten the deal. Bea suspected of course. She of all people knew what it meant to come home half delirious, smelling of Virginia’s perfume, tasting of Virginia. It was hard to guess who Bea was the more jealous of, Virginia or Eugene. Of course Jack knew about that as well. The stable yard was often quiet when the house was busy, a more private spot for a rendezvous, and in 35 years Jack had spilled no secrets. How could he? A black man in a white world? He had had his wife, and then his son to look after, and no good would come of the masters and mistresses knowing he could see every bit as clearly as them. Besides, knowing what her father had done to her, he could forgive Virginia a great deal. He knew what it was to carry a wound.

What Virginia was doing flaunting her affair with Edward under the noses not just of Robert, but of Eugene and Beatrice too, Jack could not fathom. But perhaps she was doing nothing. Virginia didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how others might feel. The little girls were testament to that. Jack had been there the day Margaret, the older, had been born, and watched her grow into a spirited girl who chased and wrestled with Mark in the fields and laughed with abandon. But for all that, he could see she was lonely. Seeking out the company of grooms and servants, scared to get underfoot but so keen to be seen. When Elizabeth had come along just after Margaret’s tenth birthday, she had carted that baby everywhere with her. She did it all – changed the nappies and everything. She doted on that child like her own daughter.

Things had changed after the separation though. Perhaps it was just adolescence, but as she had entered her womanhood, Margaret had grown sullen, withdrawn. All the beauty of her mother, and none of the fire. Since Edward had arrived on the scene, Margaret seemed to have taken every opportunity to come to the stable yard, bringing Elizabeth with her. Jack had watched Mark and Margaret teaching the child how to groom a horse, Mark holding her high to reach the withers, Margaret holding the five year old’s hand on the brush, moving it in firm, gentle strokes. If he didn’t know better, Jack thought they looked like a young family. Too young. But perhaps… Jack recalled with a pang of concern the day just a few months ago that Mark, pain ripe across his face, had asked him for money. Jack trusted his son and asked no questions, but he had not seen Margaret for a few days after that, and had heard she was sick with fever. Mark had been angry and distracted for all that time, and Jack had found him one afternoon, crying as he hugged a shotgun to his chest. Jack would not pry, but he wondered what was between those two. Whatever mistakes they made in youth, he held hope that losing one another would not be one of them.

No. These things did not happen. A half cast groom and his mistress’s daughter. Besides, Margaret had told him that since Annie Rogers had been awarded her degree from Oxford five years earlier, she too was going to go to university and study classics. Or botany. Jack believed her. The girl could name all the plants in the garden and over tea, or soup at the worn table in the three-room apartment he and Mark shared above the stable office, Margaret often told them stories of ancient Greece, a world of intrigue, philosophy, and art. In the quiet moments, though, Margaret was cowed, and Jack hated to see her that way. He made food for the girls often, in these rooms he had inhabited since Mark’s mother had died, where they could look out over the courtyard and see the heads of six horses over their stable doors, safe and secure. Virginia did not seem to care whether the children were fed in the big house or at the yard, as long as when Lily, the housemaid, came to tell them Margaret was required at the house, she returned. Margaret would ask, then, if Elizabeth could stay with Jack and Mark, and Elizabeth would beg to come with her, and Margaret would tell her she would not allow it. More than once they had made up a bed for the little girl on the worn sofa in their small kitchen come living room. Then Margaret would return in the morning, and Elizabeth would ask if the party had been very grand, and Margaret would hold her tightly on her lap and tell her that parties are no fun at all. She never faltered in her dedication to that girl.

The party by the pool had been unusual, in one regard. Virginia wasn’t high. Not as far as Jack could tell. When Virginia had cut things off with Eugene, he had told her to find another doctor, but Jack had heard her retort – that it would cost him his career to stop her supply. She had said it lightly, laughingly, as they rode into the yard side by side, but the threat was real, however well it masqueraded as banter. Perhaps it was the presence of Robert’s friends, that last morsel of decorum forcing Virginia to wait until after sundown to enter that realm of abandon she sought so often. Perhaps it was that languid heat that leant its own torpor to the gathering. They were liberal in their alcohol consumption though, and had called on Margaret to mix cocktails from the drinks trolley and bring them out on silver trays.

Robert’s side of the party had drunk almost as much as Virginia’s by the time it was usual to take tea, but had retired into the house for more sobering sustenance, and dispersed shortly afterwards, where Virginia’s guests remained on loungers beside the pool. Robert had taken out what remained of the sandwiches and cake once his own guests had departed, and everyone had been civilised and polite, though guffaws of laughter crept around the patio door and over his retreating back before he had fully closed them out. Jack wondered why Robert stuck around. The house was Virginia’s, the land, the stables, all of it, and Robert had struck gold in marrying her, despite his own family’s embarrassment after the war. Virginia was drawn to a scandal like a moth to a flame however, and never had cared for convention. She had given birth to Margaret just seven months after the wedding. It was widely accepted that Robert was her father, though Jack himself had wondered. After Virginia’s father had died in a shooting accident in 1907, the estate had passed to Virginia, though she was too young to handle it, and she had become an extremely eligible bachelorette, though she was too young to handle that, too. Jack supposed that a man grew used to that lifestyle very quickly. It would be hard to walk away. And it was not the case that there had never been love between them. Robert and Virginia had adored one another, avidly, hopelessly, tempestuously. Robert had avoided the draft until 1917, but it was their separation which had perhaps upset the precipitous equilibrium they had created. They did all they could, Jack supposed, when the war was over. They fawned over one another, he bought her kittens, she took him to Egypt, he painted her, poorly, and she, as soon as the Law of Property Act was passed, remade her will to ensure that he could inherit it all. But that had been three years ago, and as Virginia sought her excitement beyond the marriage more and more, Robert had pulled away into his own life, staying in the city more often than he was home.

Edward was the latest in a line of lovers that had thinned, but never really stopped, during Virginia’s marriage. Politicians, aristocrats, business leaders, Virginia could secure an invitation to any occasion she wished to attend, and more. It was hard for a woman to hold any real power without wielding it through men obligated to her, and Virginia had a lot of power. Edwards youthful vitality was clear, but Jack wondered how much his father, a chief constable, would want known of his son’s heroin addiction. He suspected there was more, too. Lily had told him of the noises coming from behind locked doors on some of those party evenings, always when Robert was away in town. The guests, mainly men, arriving and being ushered by Virginia herself straight past the elegant reception rooms on either side of the marble floored entrance hall and up the grand central staircase, disappearing into Virginia’s private suite.

The swimming party was different, of course, though any casual observer would have noted the tension. By six, the guests had evaporated into the summer evening. Edward remained, retreating with Virginia behind the door of her room, while Robert played billiards alone in the library, moving in fitful semi circles amidst the dusty books. Margaret bathed Elizabeth, grimy from playing in the horse’s meadow, in lukewarm water in the nursery. The girls had eaten lightly, and the adults, hot, drunk and soporific, had declined dinner. Mark had told Jack he would feed and water the horses, and left him, in the marginally cooler early evening, to check the meadow edge for spreading hemlock or ragwort. It was from there that he watched Virginia leave the house through the double doors which let out from the morning room. She moved sluggishly, dragging her feet, stumbling a little, and Jack turned away in embarrassment for her. Still, he kept a discreet eye on her as she entered the summer house and slumped herself onto the chaise, a brocade indulgence she had bought for the pleasure of her drowsy reveries. The plants, she said, made her feel transported.

*

Later, after Robert had appeared, breathless in the stable yard, after Mark had run for a doctor, after Eugene had pronounced the death, and Bea, still drunk, had wept and woken Elizabeth, after Margaret and Lily had stared, wide eyed and pale at Robert’s words and Jack had found Edward, unconscious on Virginia’s bed, after the police had come and the word had gone out that Virginia Percy was dead, an overdose, respiratory failure, a tragedy, so much life left to live, motherless children, later, Jack wondered at what he had seen in the meadow. The trampled flowers, and cut stems. But Jack had been with the Percy family 35 years, and had spilled no secrets.