A Bright Young Thing Read online

  A Bright Young Thing

  A Novel

  BRIANNE MOORE

  For my parents, who were always happy to listen to my stories

  Acknowledgments

  As ever, my first and greatest thanks must go to my incredible, supportive, loving, and extremely tolerant family, who have always encouraged and believed in me. Without them, I probably would have thrown in the towel on this whole writing thing ages ago.

  I’d especially like to thank my husband, Adam, who manages the day-to-day realities of living with a (sometimes moody, sometimes distracted) working writer. Honey, I don’t know where you find your patience, but I’m very grateful that you do!

  Thanks also to the Rogue Writers of Edinburgh, who first read this story. Their honest feedback and enthusiastic responses were invaluable. Write on, you lovely people!

  And finally (but certainly not at all least!) I’d like to thank the splendid team that helped bring this book out of my head and into the wider world. Thank you to my agent, Steven Chudney, my wonderful editor, Faith, and the rest of the lovely people at Alcove Books. You’ve all made a nearly 20-year dream of having this book published become a reality, and I will be forever grateful.

  Chapter One

  Orphanhood came suddenly on a glass-clear day in February 1930. It was the first dry day that week, so my parents decided to take the new Delage out for a drive.

  “Time to stretch her legs,” Father said. “We may go have a wander around Rockingham Castle. You should come along and get some roses in those cheeks.”

  He ruffled the top of my head, and I ducked and playfully swatted him away. How many hundreds of times had I been hauled off to Rockingham over the years? Even my father could only make the place sound interesting so many times. Anyway, I had a cold to recover from and a poem that wanted writing. So, I stayed behind.

  “Just an hour or two,” they said. They kissed me on the cheek, urged me to get some rest, and were gone. Replaced, seemingly in a blink, by Officer Anson (poor man, only his second week on the job). Helmet in hand, pale, stammering that there had been an accident. That half a mile outside Market Harborough, Mother had cut the wheel too sharply and sent the car tumbling down an embankment.

  I stared at him as he stood, sweating, in front of the fire. His blue wool uniform was too tight and cut into his neck. He ran a finger around the collar every now and then and shifted his weight. Funny the things you remember at times like this.

  “It’s a tricky corner, that, very tricky,” he jabbered, unnerved by my blank face and silence. “I’ve seen plenty of drivers get into trouble there—even men!” He chuckled and received in reply a long, slow blink. The fire snapped twice, sending sparks toward the chimney, and yet I felt chilly. The carriage clock on the mantelpiece hammered out its ticks, further fraying Anson’s nerves. He cleared his throat, looked down at the helmet he was still holding, as if unsure what to do with it. “They’re sure it was quick, miss. I—I’m very sorry, miss. They were good sorts, your parents. Always had a kind word.” Frowning in concern, he bent to peer into my face. “Is there … anyone else we should notify?”

  “Notify?” The word had no meaning. Not a thing he’d said after “I’m sorry to have to inform you there’s been an accident” had actually penetrated the thick shroud that almost immediately wrapped itself around me. All I could hear was the crunch of collapsing metal. The oddly musical breaking of glass as a distant car somersaulted over dead grass and mud. But no, my parents weren’t dead. Of course they weren’t. I had that new poem to show them. It would make Father laugh.

  Anson had run out of things to say, and the clock filled the silence. Finally, a voice that was not my own, but that of some frigid automaton driven by a lifetime of the right sort of training, thanked the hapless man for all his trouble. “I realize this must have been difficult for you,” the voice concluded.

  He seemed puzzled. Probably wondering why I hadn’t broken down, wailed, sobbed, cursed the fates. Isn’t that what women did when met with tragedy? He hadn’t seen enough sudden grief to know that some bodies, when shocked, self-anesthetize. He would come to know it, but for the moment he clapped his helmet back on his head and made his escape, probably thinking “the quality” were a strange lot indeed.

  Once he was gone, I threw my poem into the fire and retreated to my room. The shroud thickened and settled, swaddling me layer by layer in a protective cocoon in which I felt nothing. It was a relief, that.

  This was the first great shock of my life. There would be others—so many others—in the coming months. They would bruise and toughen and soften me all at once. But this first, this greatest, seemed more than I could bear. How could one bear such a thing? A cataclysm that opened the earth beneath you? Left you scrabbling for a handhold as you stared into the darkness that was so eager to eat you alive, and wondering, just for a little while, if it would be easier to simply let go and let the void take you?

  How do you bear the silence that follows the death?

  I stayed shut away, unable to face a house that was still full of my parents. Beyond my door, Father’s aftershave lingered. His artifact collections gathered dust. The seedlings Mother and I had planted were just beginning to sprout.

  Aunt Elinor came from London and made all the arrangements so efficiently, it was as if she’d been planning for this moment for years. Not even the death of her only sister could shock her into a torpor.

  Friends came to coddle and care for me, to try to lift me out of my stupor. But I would not lift. I drifted through the funeral service in a somnambulant daze. Afterward, I was parked by the fire in the drawing room to receive the usual platitudes: “Such a shame! Such a lovely couple—and in the prime of their lives.” And, when they thought I couldn’t hear, “Astra will be quite the catch now, won’t she?” Appraising eyes roamed the rooms, picking up on the new furnishings, thick-pile carpets, and streamlined sculptures that spoke of wealth and style and a careless sort of spending.

  I might still be there, among the curio cabinets and cream velveteen, if not for Father. One fine day in April, Mr. Edgry, our family solicitor, rolled up the drive and informed me that if I didn’t make a change to my living standards soon, I wouldn’t have a penny to my name by July.

  “What sort of change do you mean?” I asked, my cottoned-up brain struggling to make sense of the ledgers and papers before me.

  “Economies, my dear,” he answered, leaning back in the chair he’d assigned himself (Father’s leather armchair, naturally). “Economies must be made. Serious ones.”

  “Well, I suppose we could do without a housemaid,” I suggested.

  He regarded me across the expanse of Father’s desk with a mixture of pity and contempt. “You don’t seem to understand,” he said, carefully enunciating every word.

  “The under-gardener too, then,” I offered, though I was loathe to lose garden staff. “Perhaps the butler?”

  Beside me, Aunt El made a mortified noise, quickly strangled with a harsh cough.

  Edgry closed his eyes as his face steadily reddened. His blood-sausage fingers clenched his lapels. I had the disturbing sense he was trying very hard not to throttle me. He slowly rose, looming over me.

  “The housemaid must go, and the under-gardener, and the butler, and the house!” He snatched a handful of bills and waved it at me. “Don’t you understand? You can’t afford any of it. Your Father lost it all. You have nothing.”

  Those words—you have nothing—somehow penetrated the cocoon I’d been sheltering in. They tore right through it—riiiiip—and light and air flooded in, stripping the last comforting threads away and shaking, slapping me awake. Everything was too loud and too bright: the tweeting of the robins in the stone birdbath
just outside hammered at my skull, and the brilliant blue of the morning glories stung my eyes.

  Something began expanding in my chest, ballooning so massively it would surely blow me to pieces. Instead, it traveled upward into my throat and came out not as tears, as expected, but as hysterical laughter.

  Edgry was so startled he leaned away, as if he thought I might suddenly be a danger to him. Aunt El, in horror, hissed: “Astra, control yourself!”

  And then the tears came. I’d laughed hard enough for my sides to hurt, but the laughter vanished just as soon as it had come, and I exploded into loud, messy sobs that utterly defeated the handkerchief Aunt El shoved toward me.

  “H-how could this happen?” I gasped. “How?”

  “Millions of people all over the world are asking themselves that question.” Edgry pushed away from the desk and paraded angrily around the room. “The fact of the matter is, Astra, your Father, God rest him, was a fool. No sense at all, that man. And then of course he started to get desperate when your mother—”

  Another noise from Aunt Elinor interrupted him—a bizarre sound this time, like a goose being throttled while playing a trumpet. Edgry glanced at her, then cleared his throat and pressed on, circumnavigating the room as he spoke.

  “Well, you know how it is. Plenty out there in the same pickle you’re in, my dear. At least you still have something of worth.” He waved his arm at the walls as he came to a stop at the window overlooking the garden. After a few moments’ silence, he turned to me, hands clasped behind his back, and said, “The best thing you can do is to sell up. Go live with your aunt and cousin, pay off the debts, and put away anything left.”

  Aunt El stifled another cough and agreed. “Yes, of course you must come stay with Toby and me.” Though I could practically see her calculating the cost of housing another person.

  “Sell Hensley?” With everything that had happened, I would lose my home as well? Leave the echoes of my parents behind and let them become the property of strangers? And that was even assuming I could sell it. I didn’t know anyone who was buying places like Hensley. Most people were getting rid of them. “I’m not selling the house. The Davieses have been here for a century. My mother built those gardens.” I gestured to the flowery expanse beyond the French windows. “There must be something else I can do.”

  I grabbed a ledger and scanned it, wishing I’d been better prepared for this sort of thing. But my governess had said, “What does a girl need sums for? You’ll scare off your suitors.” And Mother had smiled and promised to teach me what I needed to know “when the time came.” Had that time not come and gone? I was twenty-three years old—what had she been waiting for?

  “What’s this?” I asked, pointing to an entry for Vandemark Rubber. It looked like the only thing in the ledger that didn’t have a minus sign next to it.

  Edgry huffed and flopped back down into the chair. “I told your father not to get mixed up in that, but he never listened to me,” he said. “‘Helping a friend,’ he called it, and gave that fool enough money to buy a twenty-five percent stake in the company.”

  “Well, it couldn’t have been such a bad idea,” I pointed out. “It’s making money.”

  His face darkened. “Not for long, I’m sure. It’s owned by the Ponsonby-Lewises.”

  My cousin, Toby, who up until now had been content to recline on a sofa and watch the show, groaned.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the Ponsonby-Lewises, Tobias!” his mother snapped. “They’re a fine family. And sit up like an adult, for heaven’s sake!”

  “They aren’t fine at all, Mums,” Toby countered, slowly rising and giving me a pitying look. “They’re an old family, and that’s not the same thing. I knew their son and believe me: this is a family whose tree hasn’t branched enough.”

  “What are some of these others, then?” I asked, again turning to the ledger and hoping for a miracle. “Who’s this Clarence Ha—”

  “Never mind that. It was something that didn’t work out, just like the rest of them.” Edgry snatched away the ledger and snapped it shut. After tucking it away in his satchel, he folded his hands over his belly and glared at me.

  “If you’re determined to be foolish about this and hold onto the place, you’ll have to let it to someone,” he said. “You don’t have the money to keep it up; you can hardly even pay the servants. Your father was about to start mortgaging it just to keep you all afloat. Get a tenant until you can find a man who can afford to help you keep it.”

  Even through my confusion, I resented that last bit. Was it so outrageous that I find a way to keep up my own house?

  And so, the house was let. I was surprised, given the state of things, that we found someone. But though millions suffer, there will always be some people with money. The one we found was a flash theatrical producer who wanted his family out of London so he could continue his affair with a promising young actress from the chorus line of Rio Rita.

  “They agreed to a generous price,” Edgry told me in a tone that still indicated disapproval. “Between that and what comes in from Vandemark Rubber, you should have an income of around a thousand pounds a year. Do try not to spend it all on hats, will you?”

  So, to London, with its tarry air stinking of motor oil, coal, and manure. London, with its cacophony of noise: the clatter and crash of traffic and trains, tooting horns and bleating whistles, bellowing newsboys and beggars and buskers—all clamoring for money and attention. Streets that darkened prematurely, hiding tramps and pickpockets hovering just outside the ghostly ring of light cast by globe-shaped lamps.

  To Aunt El’s house on Gertrude Street, one in a row of staid, respectable homes. White stucco on the ground floor and brick above. Inside: decor that had been very popular the year Prince Albert died.

  I arrived on a clammy day in November and took in my new surroundings: the saints and crosses, threadbare carpets, heavy furniture, and light-smothering draperies. And I thought, I need to go home.

  But to go home, I needed money.

  How far would a thousand pounds a year stretch? What did I need? What could I trim and set aside? It had taken this disaster for me to realize I didn’t know what the simplest things cost. And I needed to know because economies, as Edgry had said, would have to be made. So the day after my arrival, I sat down and, using one of Mother’s account books as a sort of guide, attempted a budget. Two hours later, this was what I had:

  Income: £1,000/year

  Projected Expenditures:

  Lady’s Maid: £65–100

  Clothes:

  Entertainment: free, with the right friends

  Card games: £100–200 (?)

  Travel: variable

  Just like Edgry’s ledgers, Mother’s accounts were a mystery to me: pages and pages of pounds and pence and who was paid and who was owed, but nothing to suggest money was coming in. How was she paying for these things? And what were some of them? I puzzled over entries for something called “Rosedale”: the rather princely sum of 50 pounds paid promptly the first of every month, going back as far as the ledger did. It was nearly the only thing paid on time. And more recently, “Dr. H” appeared, accompanied by amounts so large my stomach actually knotted.

  But that was the least of it. There were huge sums that I knew could be attributed to me. To the things I needed to be a fashionable young lady. Dressmakers and travel expenses and gifts for friends who were getting married or having babies. I almost cried at the sight of them. Where to even begin?

  As I gaped at the ledger, Toby strolled in, glanced at my work (if you could call it that), tsked, and commented, “Grim stuff, old girl.” He patted me on the shoulder and eased over to the window to claw back the layers of curtains and starched net. A feeble finger of sunlight penetrated the gloom for all of ten seconds before retreating behind a passing cloud.

  Toby sighed and turned his attention to the sofa, pummeling cushions that, under the pressure of nearly half a century’s worth of bottoms, had red
istributed most of their plump to the outermost edges, as if the stuffing were trying to flee.

  “You may,” he continued, “have to start buying your frocks from the shops. And—dare I say it?—you might need to trade your holiday in Cannes for a week in Biarritz instead.” He tossed me a cheeky smile before giving up on the sofa assault and stretching across the cushions with a wince.

  “Hardly the time for jokes!” I rubbed my forehead as the deep pulsations of an impending headache began. How much did aspirin cost? Could I still afford headaches?

  “Au contraire, my dear. The bleak times make for the best jokes. Gallows humor and all that. Something about dreadful situations brings out the cleverness in people.”

  “Not me.” I put my pen aside and slumped in the chair, feeling defeated.

  “Oh, give it time, darling. Once the dust has settled, I’m sure you’ll come up with something.” Toby drew a tortoiseshell cigarette case from his pocket and scrutinized the contents before selecting one.

  “I’ll have to, won’t I?” I said, shaking my head as he offered me the case. “No, thank you. A whole one will make me jittery. I’ll draw off yours.”

  Toby’s eyebrows rose. “You’re lucky I’m a generous soul.” He struck a match, lit the cigarette, took a drag, and leaned back, eyes closed, slowly exhaling the smoke. He smiled, a private, satisfied sort of smile and then handed the cigarette to me. I took a quick puff and returned it.

  Toby mournfully shook his head as he accepted the cigarette. “You have to learn to appreciate things.”

  “You know how your mother feels about girls smoking,” I reminded him, glancing toward the door to make sure Aunt Elinor hadn’t suddenly appeared, summoned by sin. “And that’s just what I need—to have her toss me out.”

  “Nonsense, Mother would never do that. Throwing over the orphaned niece would put her hopelessly behind in the sainthood stakes.” Toby took another careful drag of the cigarette and began absently rubbing his left knee. “You’re assured of a roof over your head for the time being, at least.”