3 Great Historical Novels (98 page)

‘Don’t play the innocent,’ was all he said.

The rain was heavy now. The wind whipped the scarf off her head and it danced around for a while and then vanished into the trees that lined the road. Her beautiful gauzy peacock tails, gone. Colour had drained from everything, all was black and white. She clung to her hat but the wind took that too, and it went after her scarf, flying through the air like some
storm-tossed
white owl. He took no notice, made no comment. It was getting dark. It was not called the Devil’s Punchbowl for nothing. Ghosts and ghouls seemed to laugh at her from the trees. The wind got up and came from all directions so the trees tossed helplessly this way and that and lost their remaining leaves in great blustery clouds. Some flew into her face and they were slimy. Piles of fallen leaves made the road slippery and the wheels lost their traction; the Jehu skidded and then slipped and slithered backwards and she hoped they would both die. Arthur regained control of the car, and up they went and up to the summit, and then down the other side with the horrid rigid silence between them. This time the descent was not so fast. Perhaps there was less water in the tank so the weight of the vehicle was not so great. Her hair was
wet as rain blew in from the open sides. Her clothes were drenched. The duster coat might keep out dust but no one had mentioned rain. The silk had no defence against the wet. And after that, when they had reached level ground he remained silent, and she could think of nothing to say, and then they had to stop again to check the reservoir.

‘I think the future lies in the internal combustion engine,’ she said, and amazingly, he laughed, and looked young again.

But all was not well yet upstairs. Her Ladyship’s wrath had not subsided. She asked Reginald to deliver a letter to Mr Abbot at Pickford’s in Maida Vale. Reginald reported below stairs that she seemed distracted and distressed when she called for him, that she was still in her wrap though it was eleven in the morning, and that it looked as if it needed a good wash; her face was puffy and her eyes were red. Lily said there had been another episode in the night between the Earl and the Countess. He had knocked at the bedroom door and she had screeched at him to go away, that she hated him, that she wished she were dead, she should never have married him. (‘Just as if she were anyone,’ as Smithers pointed out.)

‘I will not have you in my room ever again,’ her Ladyship had screamed. ‘Nor will that woman get an invitation.’

Elsie reckoned she was referring to Mrs Baum, wife to the Mr Baum who had disturbed the household a month or so ago. Nothing had been quite the same since. He had been a bird of evil omen. A black crow bringing bad news with him.

Lily, who now slept in the side room opposite the master bedroom, for her Ladyship liked to have her near at night, had been woken by the racket and now reported it in detail. She had found her tongue. His Lordship had initially been calm and mumbled something about how she must pull
herself together for the sake of the nation because ‘this was affecting his judgement and was out of all proportion to his sin’, and her Ladyship had reacted badly. He had, Elsie attested, tossed and turned all night in his dressing room, his bedclothes being so rumpled when she came to make the bed, and a pillow on the floor against the window, as if he had thrown it across the room. He walked to the House of Lords early and breakfasted there.

Mr Abbot was the man who normally handled the transport of family and staff to Belgrave Square. The expectation was that the move back to Dilberne Court would be made well after Christmas. A letter to Pickford’s was obviously of interest to the staff, and Mr Neville decided it would be in order for Smithers to steam it open and for him to read its contents, inasmuch as her Ladyship was not herself and might need to be protected from her own actions. Mrs Neville thought this was wrong of him and had snatched the letter from him, and they had words. Trouble upstairs has its echo downstairs, as Grace observed; she had dropped by as she did every few days to pass on such news as she had gleaned at Brown’s. The letter lay on the sideboard still unopened while they discussed the rights and wrongs of the situation.

Miss Minnie had gone off on an outing to inspect Dilberne Court with the young Viscount, and Reginald confirmed that the Jehu had been well polished for the occasion, and had ‘scrubbed up nicely’. The general expectation was that an engagement would be announced on their return. Grace seemed to have quite come round to Miss Minnie, for reasons upon which did she not expand, but there was a general feeling of relief that if the O’Brien stockyard money came rather soon to the Dilberne estate it would be no bad thing.

Since Mr Baum’s early arrival on the steps at the end of
October there had been much talk of financial difficulty, and her Ladyship had certainly been rather cautious in her menus – twelve courses and only twenty-eight guests for a charity dinner which royalty was attending was unusually parsimonious – though Reginald attested that the spending on clothes was still lavish, especially in Mrs O’Brien’s company.

But that was beside the point. Were they going to read the letter to Pickford’s or not? All looked to Grace for a decision. She was moody and could be irrational but generally considered a deep thinker. She pondered for a while and then said, yes, the circumstances were exceptional and Mr Neville should go ahead. So Cook put on the kettle and the glue of the envelope was softened in the steam, Grace carefully and ceremoniously opened the letter and read the contents aloud.

It was a request to Mr Abbot to bring forward the date of the move to Hampshire from January 7th to December 4th. His Lordship and the Viscount would not be accompanying them.

‘She can’t do that,’ said Mrs Welsh. ‘The seventeenth is the royal dinner. She has to be here. The Prince is coming. I’ve got it all in my head, all twelve courses.’

‘Oh thank goodness,’ said Elsie. ‘Alan will need someone to keep him on the wagon over Christmas. I’ve been worrying so.’

‘I’ve delivered all the invitations,’ said Reginald. ‘But it suits me.’

‘It won’t do,’ said Grace. ‘You can’t uninvite royalty,’ and went upstairs to see her Ladyship.

Reginald resealed the letter and took it round to Maida Vale and delivered it into the hands of Mr Abbot himself, who read it briefly and asked him to wait for a reply. It would take only a few minutes.

Tessa was surprised not to find Grace in attendance. She marvelled at how little time it took to become dependent on someone to do your thinking for you, how convenient to have your clothes chosen for you and to tell you how to conduct yourself in public. She must try and find someone like her when she went back to Chicago. If she went back to Chicago. Life here was so much more entertaining than it was back home. Even the newspapers were livelier. She had begun to read the
London Gazette
and follow the progress of the war England was fighting in South Africa. She had lost interest in the war in the Philippines. She no longer felt obliged to tell everyone how much better and bigger everything was in Illinois, from the cattle to the lakes. It was almost as if this was her own country, and she was here by right. She wondered what would have happened if she had met Eyre Crowe and had his baby before she’d met Billy, and moved back with him to London.

It had been a wild party that she and Eyre had gone to. There had been an incident with another of the artists whose name she couldn’t even remember, but best not to dwell on that. Billy had been happy to acknowledge another’s child as his and bring her up as his own. But to live all your life with a man you liked very much in an unconsummated
marriage was surely not right. You could get the Pope to annul a marriage, if you wanted and could pay, which she could – she could pay anything these days, though Billy might try to stop her.

She could start afresh in a new marriage, in a new land where she could begin again. Billy, she assumed, but you never knew, would go on supporting her; and even if he didn’t, Eyre probably had money enough for both of them. He was a well-established painter. His works hung in the Royal Academy. You did not stay poor if that happened to you. She had thought perhaps Eyre might be at the d’Asti party, but he hadn’t been. She’d thought the guests were a rather mixed lot, and Grace had agreed. They were not all out of the top drawer.

Where was Grace? There could be no harm in just going round and seeing what Eyre looked like these days; you just didn’t know after all these years. If he looked presentable she might just introduce herself to him. She knew he had not married. Perhaps he still thought of her, pined for her even? He lived (Mr Eddie had traced him through the Royal Academy, and Tessa hoped he was discreet) where Great Portland Street merged with Charlotte Street. But she did not want to sit in a cab on her own, watching a front door like a jealous woman, with the cab driver sniggering away. Perhaps Mr Eddie would come with her? Grace was quite pally with Mr Eddie, she had noticed. On the ornery side Grace, but as a lady’s maid, superb.

Which was why Tessa found herself sitting in a cab with Mr Eddie at half-past noon outside No. 88, as the door of the respectable town house opened and three respectable gentlemen came out, from the look of them going to lunch. One was Eyre Crowe, looking older and greyer than she
remembered him. Well, of course she didn’t suppose she herself she looked any younger, but Eyre had gone down the desiccated route while she had gone the fleshy way; he looked as if a mere breath of Billy’s roaring laugh could sweep him quite away. He looked very different, now that she saw him in the flesh, from the man in the Whistler painting, much more like the man she remembered. One man she recognized as the curator from the Royal Academy, the other she did not know, but he was like one of those kind of guys you met in the corridors of the Art Institute back home, thoughtful peering creatures who knew everything there was to know about everything arty or philosophical, except how to get a woman to bed or enjoy a good dinner.

She opened the side window and listened. They paused just by her cab; the conversation absorbed them, and they did not even notice her. Mr Eddie sat still and listened too. He had been a pleasant escort, pointing out sights of interest on the journey, and asking no impertinent questions.

‘It was Hallam’s argument,’ one was saying, ‘that scepticism in philosophy, atheism in religion and democracy in politics, is the only way to achieve truth.’

‘All very well,’ Eyre was saying. ‘But where does that leave Art?’

Tessa thought she had heard all she needed to hear, seen all she needed to see. Let them get on with it. Anyway she loved Billy: a cuddle was better than many women got at her age, and it was only on a bad day that she thought he was so busy making money he wouldn’t notice if she was there or wasn’t. Of course he would be hurt and upset if she left. She closed the window gently – not that there was much danger these brainy old men would notice what was going on around them – and said to Mr Eddie:

‘That’s enough. Let’s go home.’ And as the driver whipped up his horse, she added: ‘Little does he know what a narrow escape he had.’

Mr Eddie took note of the remark. He would pass it on to Grace and he knew she would be relieved that Lord Master Arthur’s father-in-law would not suddenly change. Such things could happen.

The Arnold Jehu puffed up to the entrance porch of the Bear Inn and Arthur escorted Minnie inside. He asked the landlady to see to her wet clothes. Minnie returned in half an hour or so, comparatively dry and dressed in a simple blue skirt and white shirt and woollen wrap which the hotel, he supposed, was used to providing these days for drenched lady motorists. He himself had been protected from the worst of the downpour by his long leather coat, and a rub down with a towel sufficed. He ordered a simple meal of steak and kidney pie and a bottle of wine between them.

He apologized when she reappeared.

‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘My behaviour was not excusable. But you must acknowledge it was something of a shock. I was surprised that you did not tell me from the beginning, but
autres pays, autres moeurs.’

Minnie responded by demanding a whisky and soda. When it came she complained that it tasted differently from the whisky she had back home.

He said no doubt she knew. No doubt her past life was full of whisky and sodas of one kind or another. She glared at him and drank it down and asked for another. She was looking very pretty, and they ate by candlelight.

He told her all about Flora and how he kept her in a house in Half Moon Street, and how, pressured by his parents he had panicked and even asked the girl to marry him, then, having met Minnie, changed his mind. He did not mention bloody Redbreast; that seemed unnecessary. He told her he’d realized he was unwilling to give Flora up – ‘What a pretty name!’ said Minnie – even after marriage, so perhaps the answer was not to get married at all. He certainly did not want to embark on a marriage knowing there was a third person in it, even though marriage was for procreation, and pleasure taken outside it merely human and excusable. He was not as low as that. His parents would have to solve their financial problems leaving him out of it.

She pushed away her plate of steak and kidney pie, saying she did not like meat – her father ate little else, though he sometimes tempered it with corn or hominy grits.

‘I thought the Irish lived on potatoes,’ he said. ‘At least you don’t inherit that particular tendency.’ She looked at him oddly.

‘You must see,’ he said, ‘that a man from a family like mine, whose son will eventually be an earl, must be very careful. The wife must be above reproach. The line has to breed true.’

‘I am not a bitch,’ she said, and ordered some sole and then when it arrived complained that the lemon was dry and had no juice in it and demanded another. She lacked the
savoir
faire
of his mother, who would have thought it beneath her to complain about a dry lemon. In her own household, of course, yes, standards had to be kept up at all costs, but outside it, no. His mother had been of comparatively humble, though wealthy, stock, on her father’s side, but knew how to behave. This girl tried, but couldn’t quite.
Not a bitch
. He’d never heard a girl say the word like that. She had the instincts of an
Irish peasant, a background in the Chicago stockyards. All the same, with her hair falling lavishly about her face as it lost the last of its dampness, she was very attractive. He would not have been sorry to marry her.

He wished she had not made it impossible. Flora could have faded somehow into the background, but Minnie had to bring it up. He would have it out with Rosina when he got back. Confounded Rosina could be a terrible mischief-maker. Because she was not happy she wished everyone else to be unhappy.

‘For a bitch not to breed true,’ Minnie said, ‘she needs to have had pups. I’ve had no children.’

‘People try to argue that on this side of the Atlantic too,’ Arthur said, ‘but it is not the case. With mares and bitches, all they have to do is get out once and they’re never the same again.’

‘The hog that a sow happens to get out with first,’ she said, ‘makes no difference whatsoever to the litter she produces when properly mated. How can it? I am a child of the stockyards. We breed scientifically. You English are just romantics.’

And she, talking like this, was most certainly not a romantic. Minnie of the stockyards! He could hear his friends laughing.

‘There is no reason we cannot remain friends,’ he said. ‘In fact I hope we do.’

He knew she liked him. He could tell from the way she inclined her body towards him. She would be easy. A girl who does it with one man will do it with another. Girls quickly get a taste for sin, learn to compare one man with another, enter the realm of the animal where Flora dwelt, comparing ‘doodles’ one to another, and go on looking for perfection until the end of their days, never satisfied. 

‘I’ve asked them to light a fire in the bedroom upstairs,’ he said. ‘It’s very pleasant up there. Shall we go up for a nightcap?’

She didn’t jump to her feet and scream or stab him with the knife with which she was cutting her cheese, though the expression on her face suggested she might – but just stiffened and enquired coldly,

‘Are you out of your mind?’

And then, in a gesture worthy of the Chicago stockyards, she slapped his face.

Arthur went out to see that the Jehu was safely tucked away for the night, and when he went back inside she was nowhere to be seen.