Chapter 22. A Train Ride
She missed the first train; overslept as if resting up for coming trials. The simplest breakfast order (croissants and coffee) seemed to take this hotel forever; they couldn’t believe she didn’t want their “nice kippers” and “fried tomatoes”. Managing all her new boxes proved impossible until the concierge fetched twine and roped them together into a still threateningly unwieldy parcel. Why wouldn’t she have them sent? Impossible to explain that these clothes suddenly seemed more intimate, more “hers” than the pre-pregnancy and shabby maternity clothes awaiting her at that castle. She definitely required the services of a porter. Scarlet had come up in the world. Unfortunately, she missed the second train, too.
Sitting in the third train – it was lunchtime as this point – she felt dull, self-accusatory, downright stupid. Her buyer’s remorse was so severe she couldn’t even open Miss Clew. She’d managed everything so badly.
Ian didn’t know when she was arriving. Oakhampton was too far to take a taxi. She’d have to call him from the station and hope he answered the phone. She was feeling nervous about all this shopping. London clothes in the country? What was the idea behind that? Was the best way to deal with Ian’s sudden aristocratic craziness to get crazy too? The Merry Widow was especially embarrassing.
It now seemed to her like angry, “revenge” shopping, which was exactly what it had been. She couldn’t forget that spectral look in the eyes of Stella, manager at Montcalm Ladies’ Clothiers, inciting her by acceptance and flattery into playing the “wealth game”. Scarlet had only been too glad to comply. Was that what it felt like being Ian, taken advantage of by all the broadcasters and auctioneers he hoped to impress?
Even the London flat seemed now more like a will o’ the wisp than a solid achievement. How had she let a giggly young estate agent maneuver her into the biggest place on offer, without getting any idea of its actual cost? If she was behaving just like Ian, then his behavior was hardly extraordinary. This is how people go bankrupt, she lectured herself. And how on earth could she ever explain any of it to India?
Ian had done all he could to make his new job sound big and important, but were new people really treated this way at the BBC? In her experience the English workplace was decidedly cheese-paring. She couldn’t help feeling there was something else on this table, something she wasn’t getting. What if everything was just another one of Ian’s rather terrifying but hopeful daydreams, like winning a football pool?
She calmed herself. She hadn’t signed for the flat. Jane was only “talking” to Margalo – surely you can’t accept responsibility for something so evanescent! If Ian’s employer didn’t give a green light, nothing would happen.
She found herself longing for the ordered world of Miss Clew who alone, it seemed, possessed the razor-sharp standards to brush all this confusion aside. The world of the Victorians was famous for its explosion of pretense, imposture and hypocrisy keeping right up with every new marvel of the technological world. But somehow, Miss Clew always saw through to real motives and intent. Eagerly Scarlet opened the next book in the series and prepared to disappear inside. After all, no amount of money could be considered “within their budget” because Ian staunchly refused to make one or even explain or plan his income.
Yet even this book flatly refused to come to life with her head in such a whirl. What were her exact fears? She looked blindly out the carriage window and resolved to list and face them. If leasing a tiny hole in the wall meant she’d be cheek by jowl with the man she was currently feuding with, that would certainly be money down the drain. But this selected flat could potentially be shared – one parent “up” and the other “down” – for the benefit of the children. It seemed like in many ways the best solution, she comforted herself.
The real question was, why did she feel so awful? Such a failure? Because of Pom, dammit! Why was this man so interested in her and why was so she so dependent on that fact?
Because her own husband was ignoring her. Dammit, dammit, dammit.
Alysse Aallyn 
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