“It will be some time before we get that,” said my father. “Do we want every Tom, Dick and Harry who can’t read or write making the laws of this country?”
“They are not asking to make the laws,” I pointed out. “They are merely asking to have a voice in which man they send to Parliament to represent them.”
“Nonsense,” said my father. “The people have to learn. They have to accept what is. They have to march with the times.”
“I would say that is just what they are attempting to do,” I said.
“My daughter is a very contentious woman,” my father remarked to Jake. “Raise a point and she is bound to come up with the very opposite.”
“It makes life interesting,” said Jake.
I was glad they liked him. I was glad he fitted in so well.
After he had gone my father said: “Interesting fellow. Fancy entertaining an ex-convict at your table, Lottie. I’m surprised at you.”
“I found him better company than quite a number I could name.”
“Such experiences are bound to leave their mark. I’m glad things worked out the way they did. It would have been a tragedy to hang a man like that. He was only in that position because he’d saved a young girl from a drunken bully. Silly young idiot.”
“Why silly?” I said. “It was just the sort of thing you would have done in your youth.”
“My dear daughter, you flatter me. I never did much which was not going to bring me good.”
“Why do you always make yourself out to be so much worse than you are? You’re bad enough without that.”
We grinned at each other. I felt so happy because they all liked Jake Cadorson.
I did not think it could happen so soon.
We should be leaving London at the end of the week and it was a Wednesday. It was arranged that Jake should visit Grasslands one week after our return. That would give me time to break the news to Tamarisk that she had a father.
He had said there was so much he wanted to know about Tamarisk, and he confessed that he was a little nervous about meeting her.
It was afternoon. I wanted to go out and make a few purchases and when I left the house I met him. I believe he had been waiting for me.
“It seems so long since we have met,” he said.
I looked at him in astonishment. “It was yesterday.”
“I said it seemed a long time … not that it was.” He went on: “I want to talk to you. I have so much to say to you.”
“Still? I thought we had talked a lot.”
“Not enough. Let’s find somewhere quiet. I know. You have not seen my house yet. It isn’t very far.”
“I was going shopping.”
“Couldn’t that wait?”
“I suppose so. It wasn’t really important in any case.”
“I should like to show you my house. It is small by the standards of your family home. My brother used it as a pied á terre, and as he was a confirmed bachelor I suppose it sufficed.”
He took my arm and I felt as though I danced along those streets. The house was in a quiet little cul de sac. There was a row of Georgian houses with a garden opposite.
“It’s charming,” I said.
“Yes. My brother had elegant tastes and liked to indulge in the comforts of life.”
“Who looks after the house for you? Have you servants?”
“There is a basement in which live Mr. and Mrs. Evers. They as they say ‘do’ for me. It’s an excellent arrangement. Everything is looked after. Mrs. Evers is a good cook and their great virtue is that they don’t intrude. My brother taught them that. They appear like Aladdin’s genie when called on. Otherwise they remain tucked away with their lamp, which is of course in their basement apartment.”
“How fortunate you are. I often think we are plagued by our servants. They note everything we do, embellish it, garnish it and serve it up as salacious titbits.”
“I am free of such observation. It can be very comforting.”
He opened the door with a key and we stepped into the hall. There was a grandfather clock and an oak chest on which stood a big brass bowl, very highly polished. The silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock. I thought to myself: I ought not to have come.
He turned and faced me.
“It is a wonderful moment for me,” he said, “to have you here … in this house.”
“I’m longing to see it.”
“Here is the dining room and the kitchen, and on the next floor a drawing room and study, on the next two bedrooms. It is quite small, you see, but enough for my needs.”
“And you have the estate in Cornwall. I take it you will be living there most of the time.”
He took me up to the drawing room. It had big windows, reaching from floor to ceiling. The apple green drapes were trimmed with gold braid and the furnishings were a deeper shade of green. The furniture was elegant in the extreme.
“Let me take your cloak,” he said, and did so, throwing it over the back of a chair. We stood facing each other and suddenly he put his arms round me and kissed me.
For a moment I did not resist. I had forgotten everything in the acute pleasure such as I had never experienced before.
Then I withdrew myself trying to give the impression that what had passed between us was nothing more than a friendly greeting. It was a poor pretence.
He said: “It is no use trying to pretend this does not exist, is it?”
“What?” I retorted sharply.
“This—between us—you and me. It’s there, isn’t it? Wasn’t it there right from the beginning? You were only a child but I knew. Of course it seemed ridiculous then. You a little girl… Myself a man who had abandoned everything to go off with the gypsies. I can’t tell you how I regretted that when I saw you. Do you remember?”
“Well… vaguely. You were sitting under a tree wearing an orange shirt. You had a guitar. Do you still play it?”
“Now and then. I was playing a part, playing at being a gypsy.”
“You had gold rings in your ears.”
“Yes. I worked hard at it. When I saw you I thought I had never seen anyone quite like you.”
“I certainly had never seen anyone like you. But then I knew little of gypsies.”
“I thought: I shouldn’t be meeting her like this. It should be at a ball and she should be older. She should be seventeen, her first ball, and she should have the first dance with me. I realized then what I had done by throwing away my old way of life, my background, everything … just for a whim.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true, I swear.”
“But you did not go back to your home.”
“You know the pride of the young. They take a step and refuse to see that it is folly. I was determined to go on with what I had begun, but I never forgot you. And then … there I was in danger of losing my life and you came to save it. Doesn’t that show that you and I were meant to be a great deal to each other?”
“I don’t know about such things. Perhaps I don’t believe that anything is meant. Things are what we make them.”
He said slowly: “I am not going to let you go now I have found you.”
“I daresay you will visit us. You are Tamarisk’s father. You will want to see her and she will probably want to see you.”
“I was not thinking of that. I love you. I always have. I used to think of you on that fearful ship and later in my hut. I used to come out at night and look at the stars overhead. I used to imagine that you, too, would be looking at the stars and they would be different from the ones I saw. We were on opposite sides of the world. We should be together always.”
“I think I should go,” I said. “Show me the house quickly and I will get on with my shopping.”
He rose, took my hands, and pulled me up beside him. For a moment we stood very close. I felt an extraordinary lassitude creeping over me. I was unsure what it meant except that it was a warning. I ought to get out of this house as quickly as possible.