3 Great Historical Novels (100 page)

It was two in the morning before Arthur got to Half Moon Street. Minnie had allowed him to take her back to Brown’s since she was left with no other way of getting home. He had found her stamping around in the lobby of the Bear Inn trying to hire a cab when it was obviously impossible to do so.

The pair had driven back in silence, she in clothes still not properly dried, too proud to complain and too angry to speak, though he did do his best to be pleasant. It would have been much easier for everyone if she had been prepared to stay the night in Esher – she could have taken her own room, but nothing would do but that she went home immediately. She even talked about her reputation, which in the circumstances was fairly absurd. When they finally got to Brown’s he had had to rouse the concierge to gain admittance. He had thought surely such a place would have a watchman on duty through the night. But no.

It was unfortunate that just as he ran the bell on the reception desk, Grace appeared out of nowhere to cluck over her young lady and fuss about her welfare. There would be extra explaining to his mother now. She was upset enough as it was. He himself had been fairly upset when she told him about his father’s misbehaviour. Her grief had probably contributed to his realization a man could not honourably
marry a wife when he had a mistress in tow. Well, others could; no doubt someone like Redbreast could, he having the nerve of the devil, which he, Viscount Hedleigh, did not.

One way and another it had been a devil of a day and he deserved time with Flora. He parked the Arnold Jehu outside the house. She was rather muddy but he looked forward to showing her off to Flora in the morning. Bother what the neighbours said. At least an Arnold Jehu was quiet, being a steam car, and didn’t wake the street with the clackety noise of an internal combustion engine. The little house was in darkness, which was a relief. The memory of seeing Redbreast and Flora entwined and silhouetted behind a lighted window blind had engraved itself on his memory. He wished he could have Flora to himself. He supposed it was not possible that he loved Flora? That he had given up his fiancée – well, almost – rather than lose his mistress, when it came to it? He might even be using Minnie’s past – which to some people would not seem so terrible – as an excuse to get out of the marriage. Of course the poor girl had been upset. She was a nice, bright, attractive girl, and virtuous too, as her immediate response to his suggestion had proved. He would have to apologize. Life, which had once been so simple, with right and wrong so obvious, was getting very complicated.

He knocked again upon the door; and again. There was no reply. He called softly up at the window but had the impression there was no one there to hear. Something was amiss. He could see in the murky light from the streetlight that the aspidistra plant was not standing in its normal place on the windowsill. He found his key and used it, though she did not like him doing this, preferring him always to knock. But there was something wrong.

When he went upstairs the rooms were empty, cleared of furniture, plants, ornaments. There were a few discarded
clothes in the wardrobe, the odd crushed hat, the odd fashion plate, a couple of rugs left behind. An overflowing waste paper basket lying on its side. There had been no robbery, but a swift packing, a complete but untidy removal of all belongings, a faint whiff of Flora’s cheap scent hanging in the air, and a ghostly trill of laughter but it might have been the water in the pipes. He found a note. It was from Flora and addressed to him.

‘Dear Arthur,’
it said, in Flora’s careful hand, blue ink on flower-decorated pink paper.
‘Forgive me, but I have gone to Robin. He loves me very much and looks after me. Remember me with affection as I do you, your loving Flora.’

He went out onto the landing, and sat on the stairs because there was nowhere else to sit. He felt very sleepy so he took a dusty old rug and put it in the bath and pulled another one over him and lay cramped and shivering until he fell asleep.

Early in the morning there was a tremendous knocking on the door, which made the floor shake. He clambered out of the bath in a hurry, aware of an evident emergency. He looked out of the window and a helmeted policeman with brass buttons and a small neat moustache was walking round the Jehu, making notes. Somebody else seemed to be hurling themselves against the front door trying to break it open. Arthur hurried down the stairs and opened the door just as two more policemen fell inside, these two both wore tremendous moustaches. One was very tall and fat and the other one quite small and weedy, and wearing thick-lensed spectacles. He couldn’t help feeling that for some reason they wanted to make him laugh, so he did.

They did not laugh in return but, grim-faced, pushed past him in their eagerness to get upstairs and catch whoever it was they were after. He went after them. He was very stiff from sleeping in so uncomfortable a place as a bath.

‘Your bird has flown,’ he said, as they stopped, surprised. Because there was nowhere for anyone to hide. They looked under the rugs in the bath but there was no one there either.

He found himself laughing again, and the little one said, ‘It’s no laughing matter, sir, as you will find out.’ They showed him badges which claimed to be from Vine Street Police Station and one of them bent and picked up a discarded pink camisole from the floor, inspected it, and said, ‘Be so good as to adjust your dress, sir.’

He asked them what they were doing and the talkative one said, ‘Making the area safe for respectable folk, sir.’ Arthur said he was perfectly respectable folk and a man can sleep in a bath if he wants to, and when they asked for his name and address, he gave it as Viscount Hedleigh and No. 17, Belgrave Square.

One of them asked if that was where the Earl lived. Arthur said, ‘Well, obviously.’

They looked at one another and murmured something inaudible. He wanted badly to sit down but there was nowhere to sit. He opened the window and sat upon the sill and swung his legs. This seemed to annoy them: they ran to where he sat and swung his legs back on the floor. He was not accustomed to being manhandled and said so, and adding that if anyone owed anyone respects it was they to him, not he to them: they were surely the servant of the tax-payer not the other way round. He hoped he was right about this. If Minnie had been around she could have told him. He said they had no business breaking into the property of honest citizens.

Everything quietened down. He thought perhaps he had hit one of them: there was some muttering about ‘in the course of their duty’. They asked after a Miss Flora Evans and Arthur said he did not know her whereabouts. She had lived here once but had recently moved out. They asked him how long, and
where, and he said he had no idea, and they suggested that cooperation would be to his advantage. He said he was more than anxious to cooperate, which by now was true.

They asked for the name of the occupant of the flat and asked him who paid the rent, and he said he paid the rent. He remembered Reginald once saying something about the new vagrancy laws but could not remember exactly what, and surely they were meant for the lower classes not people like him. Arthur was sensible enough not to say this. No, there was no other occupant. They said the neighbours said otherwise. No, he did not live in the premises. They asked him in that case why had he been there in the morning after obviously staying overnight and leaving his automobile parked outside. He had no answer. They said he was under suspicion for aiding and abetting in the keeping of a disorderly house or brothel. They would not detain him at present, but they would be in touch with him in the near future. He asked them who their informant was and they would not say. They asked for the name of his solicitor and he gave them Mr Baum’s. Arthur drove away in the Jehu. For the first time he engaged the new condenser. It seemed more important than anything that the steam pressure did not suddenly fall. As it was, water levels must be very low, for distracted as he had been, he had foolishly failed to top up the boiler when they were at Brown’s and had had the opportunity. He had installed the condenser in time for the trip to Hampshire but when it came to it had not engaged it, inasmuch as there had been one or two minor explosions when first it had been tried it out. Fortunately the Jehu, his faithful servant, now roared off into Park Lane and home with no embarrassing loss of power.

He wasn’t sure why he was laughing, save that one bad dream seemed to be easing into another. He had left Minnie.
Flora was gone. He had slept in a bath. The police were after him. Heaven knew what would happen when he got home. But home he’d got, and in style.

He parked in the Mews and went in the house through the servants’ entrance. He ate what was on the sideboard in the morning room. It was too early for breakfast, but thick soft warm new rolls, a big slab of butter and Cheddar cheese had already been laid out. There was no sign of any staff. He made plump cheese sandwiches and bit into them and for some reason this made him think of Flora, something about the contrast of softness and hardness between his teeth. How would he live without her? Then he thought of Minnie, and somehow it was the coldness of the butter as it melted in the warmth of his mouth that had made him think of her. What had he done?

He took a long hot bath to get the stiffness out of his limbs, got into bed and went back to sleep. It was just as well because it was going to be a busy day.

Minnie spent most of the next day crying. She wept on her mother, she wept on Grace. She wept for every trouble she had had in her life, every undeserved snub, insult and rejection she had ever received – because when she was five her best friend Louise stopped speaking to her, and never explained why: because when she was six, and a little boy she didn’t know pushed her over and she grazed her perfect knee, and how then her nurse Emmylou had tried to pick the gravel out with a pin so it hurt, instead of foaming it out with peroxide. She wept for the loss of a toy and the death of pets, and for the failure of Stanton to love her properly and understand the remarkable gift that the use of her body was. What worse humiliation and grief for a young woman was there ever than to be pushed aside by the man she loved?

Tessa cried in sympathy, and explained to her daughter that she was weeping not only because she had lost Arthur, but for the sum of all those sorrows past as well. Sometimes everything got together and came up and hit you. But Minnie wasn’t listening.

Tessa used every approach she could think of. Arthur was variously a vile seducer who had tried to take advantage, a silly young Englishman who had been sent away from his mother too young – and she had half a mind to give his mother
what for – and couldn’t Minnie try being angry for a change, instead of falling into self pity? There were more fish in the sea, they would go to Italy next week, he was not so great a catch as a duke and she had heard there were one or two of those available – Mr Eddie had told her the Duke of Alvechurch was a widower and looking – Grace interjected that he was far too old, and just a pity the young Duke of Pentridge was no longer available. Tessa observed that some women were perfectly happy just cuddling, what was Grace talking about, and Minnie stopped snuffling to say she wasn’t the cuddling type and Tessa said she could see that might be the case. Minnie started howling again.

Minnie said she didn’t give a hot hoot about titles any more; she just wanted to be settled and happy. And she had been so nearly settled and happy. If only she hadn’t blurted out the truth, if only, if only, if only… sob, sob, sob.

Now it was Grace’s turn to comfort her. There was bad blood in the Dilberne family: Miss Minnie was well out of it; the father had kept a mistress, the same one as the son’s – a startled ‘What?’ from both Tessa and her mother – everyone had known about it except the poor Countess herself. It would only have happened to Minnie in the end. Bad blood would out.

Minnie said she didn’t darn well care, a few years of happiness was worth a lifetime of misery.

‘You didn’t say that when Stanton left,’ said her mother, and Minnie howled.

Minnie was such a pretty girl, Grace said, so spirited and brave, and any decent man would be glad to have her, only it wasn’t wise to take the whalebones out of bodices, and perhaps next time she shouldn’t show herself to be so well-read and certainly be a little more discreet about her past, though times
were changing and soon virginity might cease to be a prize and experience more valued.

Minnie wept on. There would never be a next time. She would never risk heartbreak again. Grace rang down for some strong coffee and black cherry gâteau and Minnie stopped crying and wolfed the latter – it was so delicious.

Minnie said she had so looked forward to being mistress of Dilberne Court: she wanted like anything to be the lady of a stately English house, and Grace said as lady of the house she’d have to forget leisure, she’d have had her work cut out taking soup to the tenants and overseeing the gardeners. Minnie had had a close shave, if you asked Grace, and she should thank her lucky stars she was saved. Just as well she’d had the spirit to slap the Viscount’s face. Otherwise her reputation would be ruined on both sides of the Atlantic.

What do I care, said Minnie and she just loved Arthur and that was that, and she wanted to have children who would be half-her and half-him and that way they could never be parted. If only she’d gone upstairs with him when he asked her everything would be different.

‘It sure as hell’s bells would have been, Minnie,’ said her mother. ‘He’d have left you this morning instead of you leaving him last night. Nine months’ time and you’d know all about “different”!’ But at least, Tessa said, now they could get back home where people spoke how you could understand them. Billy would be over his pique and they could all be happy again. Home was home to her so long as it had Minnie in it. Grace was to go and ask Mr Eddie for tickets back home on the next liner out of Southampton, so long as it wasn’t the
Oceanic
.

Minnie, touched, flung her arms round her mother, and said, ‘I love you, Ma.’ Then she asked, ‘Can we take Grace with us?’

Tessa looked at Grace and asked, ‘How about it?’

‘I would like that very much,’ said Grace, after only a second or two’s thought.

‘Well whadd’ya know, whadd’ya know!’ said Tessa. ‘Poor Mr Eddie!’

Minnie finally dried her tears: they’d stopped running: she’d used them all up. She was finished with men for ever.