Deborah Goes to Dover (15 page)

Outside Gunter’s, the other footmen regarded the vision that was Benjamin, rather like a bunch of crows finding a peacock in their midst.

‘Wot you lot staring at?’ demanded Benjamin angrily.

‘We got the Duke o’ Flummery here, boys,’ jeered one. They were all idle and bored, knowing their masters and mistresses usually took a long time over their tea and confections. Baiting this newcomer seemed like excellent sport.

A tall one put his hand on his hip and began to mince up and down. ‘How can we rival such magnificence?’ he said.

‘Stow your whids, you poxy sons o’ whores,’ shouted Benjamin. ‘You popinjays. You with your faces like donkey’s arses.’

The mincing one stopped in his tracks, his face under his white paint turning red with fury. ‘There’s five o’ us and one o’ him. Let’s get ’im,’ he said.

‘Frightened to take me one at time?’ jeered
Benjamin.

They looked at him and at his deceptively tall and slight figure. ‘Barney can floor you,’ they said, pushing their hero forward. Barney was footman to a Mr Greystone, an effeminate, cowardly fellow who had chosen his bruiser of a footman for protection, rather than show.

‘All right,’ grinned Benjamin. ‘Barney it is. But what’s the wager?’

‘You name it,’ said one sulkily.

Benjamin’s eyes fell on Barney’s tall walking-stick, propped against one of the young plane trees which had been planted in Berkeley Square during the same year as the French Revolution, or, as the polite still
called it, the Bourgeois Uprising. About five feet high, it was made of Malacca-cane, with a large silver knob on top. No footman with any aspirations to elegance should be without a walking-stick. Benjamin had longed for one, but they were very expensive and he had grown thrifty since his terrible gambling debt at Rochester, and furthermore, the second-hand-clothes shops of Monmouth Street did not run to
silver-topped
sticks.

‘Your cane,’ he said to Barney, ‘if I win. Ten guineas to you if I don’t.’

The footmen moved to the middle of Berkeley Square and Benjamin and Barney began to strip down to their small-clothes.

Barney’s friends had never seen him stripped before and watched with some consternation as their hero removed his jacket to reveal that, under all the buckram wadding, he was a much smaller man. Then he peeled off his silk stockings and unstrapped a pair of false calves.

Two Exquisites, strolling across Berkeley Square, stopped and raised their eyeglasses. ‘Servants’ brawl,’ said one with distaste.

The other studied Benjamin. ‘Dash me!’ he cried. ‘Do you know who that tall thin fellow is? That’s the fellow who downed Randall at Rochester.’

The word spread like lightning. Carriages quickly blocked the entries to Berkeley Square in case the tiresome militia should try to spoil-sport.

‘I would like some more hot tea,’ said Sir George plaintively. ‘Where is Gunter? Goodness, Miss Pym,
little Gunter is outside his shop, watching something in the square and dancing up and down like a monkey on a stick. And where has everyone else gone?’ He had been so wrapped up in Hannah’s adventures that he had not noticed the confectioner’s had emptied of staff and customers.

Hannah’s sharp ears heard the cheering and the cries of, ‘A mill! A mill!’ and had a sinking feeling it all had something to do with her battling footman. Benjamin must not be allowed to disgrace her on this day of all days.

‘As the shop is empty and the hot water is just over there, Sir George,’ she said quickly, ‘allow me to help us to more tea.’

She quickly prepared a fresh pot of tea and carried it to the table and began to elaborate on her adventures, painting such a funny picture of Mr Conningham’s Norman ancestry that Sir George laughed and laughed and thought he could not remember when he had ever before been better amused.

Benjamin treated the crowd of his admirers to ten quick rounds before expertly felling Barney. He carefully put on his clothes, after making sure he had that precious stick, and then returned to his station outside Gunter’s, where he lectured a large audience on the finer points of pugilism and then, feeling they should pay for his time, passed round the hat.

Gunter’s filled up again, full of excited people discussing the fight. Sir George seemed deaf to it all. ‘The gardens at Thornton Hall are looking
magnificent, Miss Pym,’ he said. ‘Might I persuade you to accompany me there tomorrow?’

‘I should be honoured and delighted, sir,’ said Hannah demurely, while inside that green silk gown her heart tumbled and raced.

They emerged into the sunlight. There seemed to be a vast crowd. Sir George took Hannah’s arm and led her to his carriage. Benjamin grabbed his new walking-stick, broke away from his audience, and strutted to Sir George’s carriage and jumped on the backstrap. They were followed by a cheering crowd.

‘What on earth is going on?’ said Sir George, driving carefully out of Berkeley Square, not knowing the road he was on had just been unblocked. ‘There must have been a raree-show. A two-headed cow or something like that. I almost thought those people were cheering us. But that is ridiculous. I do not understand society. Why must they bring the low manners of Bartholomew Fair to Berkeley Square? By Jove, one would think there had been a prize-fight.’

Hannah twisted round and flashed Benjamin a fulminating look and got a saucy wink for her pains.

Benjamin knew, when he heard the couple making arrangements to meet on the morrow, that Hannah would not give him much of a lecture. When they arrived in South Audley Street, he ran to the horses’ heads as Sir George helped Hannah down.

‘I just remembered,’ said Sir George. ‘A friend of mine was recently in York and he swore he saw Mrs Clarence walking along the street.’

‘York!’ exclaimed Hannah.

‘So,’ he said, ‘if you go to York on your travels, mayhap you might find her at last.’

Hannah went slowly indoors after saying goodbye to him. Benjamin braced himself for a lecture, but Hannah simply sat down and stared into space. ‘Sir George said someone saw Mrs Clarence in York, Benjamin. Do you think that can be true?’

Benjamin, anxious to avoid a row, placed his new stick tenderly in a corner by the door, and said, ‘Could be. Was you thinking of travelling again, modom?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Hannah slowly. But there was Mrs Clarence, pretty little Mrs Clarence who had run off with that footman, Mrs Clarence to whom she owed so very much. Besides, only look how
enraptured
Sir George had been with her tales – so enraptured that he had not even troubled to find out what was going on in the square.

‘Ah, Benjamin,’ said Hannah severely, ‘you will now tell me how you came by that silver-topped stick, how …? Stop! Where are you going?’

‘Just to the booking-office,’ gabbled Benjamin. ‘See the price o’ them tickets to York.’ And he was off before Hannah could say any more.

She sat alone, brooding about Mrs Clarence and then about Sir George. That Sir George could ever look at her the way, say, that the Earl of Ashton had looked at Lady Deborah was impossible to imagine. She thought of Lady Deborah and sent up a brief prayer for her happiness before returning to worrying about Sir George.

Lady Deborah and the Earl of Ashton were riding neck and neck across the grounds of Downs Abbey. He eventually slowed his horse to a canter, then a trot and then to a halt and, laughing, Deborah reined in beside him. She was riding side-saddle and
wearing
a very smart riding-dress with a high-crowned hat.

He dismounted and came around to her and held up his arms and she slid down into them. Their horses began to crop the grass.

‘Still love me?’ he asked.

‘You know I do,’ she said, turning her face up to his. He kissed her long and hard, and then said, ‘The fact that your papa is on his way home is good news. We will get married the day he arrives.’

‘So urgent,’ she teased, leaning against him and hearing the steady beat of his heart against her breast. ‘And do you know who my maid of honour is going to be?’

‘Who, my sweet?’

‘Why, Miss Pym, of course.’

‘Excellent. Does she know?’

‘Not yet,’ said Deborah. ‘But I have her address and I will write to her and ask her. And Abigail has written to me. We are invited to her wedding and we shall go for her sake, shall we not?’

‘I would go to the ends of the earth with you,’ said the earl, holding her close.

‘Pretty, but hardly original,’ said Deborah. ‘My poor brother is still afraid of you. He crept in during the night and collected his finest clothes, or so Silvers
tells me. I have a feeling he has gone to stay with Aunt Jill with a view to courting Miss Carruthers.’

‘Poor Miss Carruthers.’

‘Do not be too hard on William. I miss him.’

‘Do you miss your old wild life? There is no need to be Miss Prim and Proper with me.’

Deborah laughed. ‘Whatever gave you the idea I had turned prim and proper?’ And she set to kissing him in a way that made his senses reel.

‘Come along,’ he said at last. ‘I am close to forgetting we are not wed and there is no Miss Hannah Pym here to stop us!’

Benjamin walked a few paces behind Hannah and Sir George the next day in the gardens of Thornton House, making great play with his walking-stick and admiring the way the sun glinted off the silver top.

How boring gardens were, thought Benjamin idly. All stupid flowers and dull trees and bushes. But Miss Pym seemed enchanted. But then, anything Sir George said or did would enchant her.

Something would have to be done. Benjamin’s shrewd black eyes rested on the pair: Sir George, elegant and courteous, and Hannah breathlessly hanging on every word.

Benjamin had no thoughts of leaving his mistress, but he considered life was going to be uncomfortable if he were ever left alone in the country with a pining Hannah Pym. A married Hannah would stay in London with all its shops and taverns and
amusements.
A Hannah who had given up hope would go
to that cottage in the country. Benjamin could picture it vividly – stone floors, rising damp, bad drains, or, more likely, no drains to speak of, bumpkins for company, and good works to pass the time.

Sir George would need a jolt in the direction of matrimony.

Mrs Courtney, like the rest of the polite world, learned from the newspapers that one Benjamin Stubbs, footman to a Miss Pym of South Audley Street, Stubbs who had trounced Randall at
Rochester,
had put up a splendid fight in Berkeley Square. Miss Pym? A footman? How could a servant afford a footman, of all creatures? Mrs Courtney quickly decided that Hannah must be some man’s mistress. It was her duty to find out and relay such news to Sir George.

Benjamin noticed her haunting South Audley Street followed by her maid. He, in turn, followed Mrs Courtney, marked where she lived, and then waited until he saw the maid, Janet, emerge alone. Benjamin, with the fear of Lady Carsey still in his mind, wanted to make sure they were not being spied on by one of her friends.

He followed Janet for some distance, waited until she went into a shop, and when she came out, pretended to bump into her.

‘I beg your parding,’ he said. ‘That I should harm such beauty.’

Janet giggled and then recognized Benjamin as being the footman of that woman her mistress had
been trying to find out about. So when Benjamin pressed her to take a glass of ale with him, she readily agreed.

Benjamin quickly found out that Janet’s mistress was a Mrs Courtney and that Mrs Courtney was interested in Sir George and therefore in Miss Pym. Benjamin deftly flirted and flattered the maid, plying her with drink, while his busy mind thought out how to turn this to Miss Pym’s advantage.

‘You see,’ said Janet confidingly, ‘I may as well tell you the truth, for Mrs Courtney is an old cat. She is furious because Sir George was seen out with this Miss Pym who she says is nothing more than a servant. She reads about you being Miss Pym’s footman and decides some rich man is keeping Miss Pym and that Sir George should know about it.

Benjamin had a bold idea. If it did not work, and Miss Pym ever found out about it, she would never forgive him. But then, there was the fear of that dreadful poking hole in the country that she might take him to.

He grinned. ‘Mrs Courtney ain’t going to like this,’ he said. ‘Is she a great gossip?’

‘The worst,’ said Janet, round-eyed.

‘You see, the gent wot is keeping my Miss Pym is Sir George himself.’

‘Lawks!’ cried Janet.

‘You reek like a brewery,’ snapped Mrs Courtney, when her maid returned.

‘All in a good cause,’ said Janet with a genteel hiccup. She related Benjamin’s news while Mrs
Courtney stared at her open-mouthed and then got out her book and carefully scored out Sir George’s name. Sir George had dared to be rude to her, Mrs Courtney; nay, he had run away from her in the Park. He should be made to suffer.

It was a prime piece of gossip. The very best gossip.

‘You are a jewel, Janet,’ said Mrs Courtney, and with a burst of democracy added, ‘a real friend.’

As Hannah Pym sadly began to pack her bags for a journey to York, for Mrs Clarence must be found and Sir George must have more stories, the buzz of gossip ran round and round London.

It was not to reach the ears of Sir George until Hannah was well on her way.

Benjamin heard the gossip from the other servants in the Running Footman, a pub hard by, and rubbed his hands.

Sir George would have to make an honest woman of Hannah Pym. Gossip was as damning as the real thing.

He whistled loudly as he went to pack his own bags until Hannah’s voice from the other room shouted to him to stop and then she came in to remind him severely of the duties of a proper footman. ‘And what are you grinning at?’ she finished.

‘I warn’t grinning,’ said Benjamin piously. ‘I was thinking o’ the Bible. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Well, I’ve just cast the whole bleeding loaf!’

‘Benjamin,’ said Hannah, shaking her head. ‘
Sometimes
I think you are stark, staring mad!’