Great Historical Novels (108 page)

As he had listened to the discussion of the Bill with Mr Baum’s strictures in his ears, Robert had decided that for once the Liberal Unionists were in the right: the Bill should not pass. In joining the ‘Noes’ he had become a floating voter, and as a
floating voter he must be wooed and won, which was why he now enjoyed the company of anyone who was anyone in the beleaguered Conservative party. The beef was excellent: the Yorkshire pudding light and golden, the gravy excellent, better than any Cook achieved. But she was something of a French cook. Not of the old-fashioned English variety. There was no fancy French cooking in the Lords. He liked it this way.

Conversation was at first light and cheerful: no pressure was put upon him, no reproach on his batting for the wrong side. He hoped they’d get round to suggesting some form of preference, an actual paid job in the administration – hardly a Secretaryship, that required unusual intelligence, let alone a President, which suggested unusual probity: but a junior Ministry, even if only of Fisheries – the trout fishing at Dilberne Court being famous – would claim a good salary, and a good salary at the moment would be more than useful. He wondered briefly how much he had realised that voting ‘no’ would be to his financial advantage and quickly dismissed this from his thoughts. He was a bumbling fellow up from the shires, no sort of wily politician.

He had listened to Baum’s voice, that was all, and responded to it, as was his duty. Baum’s was the voice of an experienced man of commerce. Robert wished he and his family had been more civil to the man. It was the behaviour of a rich man who thought himself unassailable. Now suddenly he was a poor man. It behoved him to change his ways.

‘The war was inevitable,’ observed Salisbury over apple pie and clotted cream, ‘though most regrettable. The behaviour of the Boers gave us no choice. We have to protect our colonial citizens from their bullying and the natives from their cruelty. One could not countenance a Dutch South Africa with, what? German naval ships using its ports? The Boer would bring
back slavery if they could, too. Yet jingoism, as one sees it in the press, is most distasteful. But one hardly wants to arm the enemy, does one, Robert? The inference taken from your vote this morning might be that you do.’ Ah, finally, thought Robert, over cheese, to the point.

‘Nor does one want to impoverish the nation, sir,’ he said.

‘In what way impoverish?’ asked Ritchie of the Board of Trade. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘To quote a character in
Major Barbara,
’ said Robert (by great good fortune Isobel had persuaded him to take her to the Shaw play at the Savoy, and he had woken from sleep to hear a few memorable lines),
‘“the worst of crimes is poverty”,
and what leads to poverty is damage to our great manufacturing industries through government interference. The Bill is both contrary to mining interests and too vaguely drafted to be safe.’

‘Well well,’ said Salisbury. ‘Quite understand your position, Dilberne, but perhaps you should avoid the theatre in future. If Mr Shaw has his way we will all end up Whigs!’ Robert relaxed. He’d got away with it. ‘We must get to know you better, Dilberne. You’re a good fellow, well liked, with quite an influence in high places.’

High places? The PM, Robert supposed, could only mean the Queen. But that was folly. He had met the old lady three times, true, but being a friend of the Prince was the opposite of a recommendation. The old lady thought her eldest son quite unfit for the throne, and was so confused by her daily dose of sedatives from the quacks that however he behaved she was not likely to change her mind in a hurry. Where the Prince had influence was round the gossipy dinner tables of London’s high society, and surely Salisbury in his gravity, could not take what went on there seriously?

‘I hope you trust in our Party’s capacity to steer the great ship of State into smoother waters than we have lately encountered,’ went on Salisbury. It seemed as much a plea as a statement.

‘I do indeed, sir,’ Robert replied, with the formality which seemed suddenly to be required of him, ‘given the accumulated sagacity gathered at this table, I could not do otherwise.’ But he found he had crossed his fingers as his Irish nanny had taught him to, when obliged to tell a lie. Had Balfour caught the action and frowned? Robert uncrossed his fingers casually.

‘Good,’ said Salisbury. ‘Good man. Stay with us.’ His beard was whitening fast – along with the Queen he grew old – but his authority was undiminished.

‘No harm done,’ said Balfour. ‘This time. The Bill goes to second reading.’

But his tone was very much that of the schoolmasterly ‘Just don’t let it happen again.’

Robert felt, as they left the dining room smiling, that he had passed whatever test it was and that he might get something even higher and better paid than Fisheries. He certainly hoped so.

Arthur Declines a Bride

5.30 P.M. FRIDAY, 27TH OCTOBER 1899

It was late afternoon before Arthur returned home. His mother was waiting for him. When she said it was time to discuss his marriage he expressed surprise and told her if money was still a problem he had been making enquiries as to a possible sale of the Arnold Jehu. He had paid five hundred pounds for it new: second-hand it would fetch a mere three hundred pounds. It was true enough; he had certainly contemplated selling even before seeing Flora, but the real reason, to which he did not allude, had been his speculative interest in acquiring a Serpollet or a Stanley – the newest models of which arrived fitted with a condenser, thus greatly reducing the amount of water the car must carry. He could of course make his own, with time, and sufficient garage space.

His mother for her part ignored this talk of automobiles and simply showed her son a list of the twelve most eligible young heiresses from abroad currently in London. There were photographs of a few, sketches of others in the
Illustrated London News, McCall’s
and the
Royal Gazette.

Arthur laughed.

‘Leftovers from the Season, I suppose,’ he said, leafing through the folder. And it was true, none were blessed with beauty, though a few looked kind and friendly enough. But as his mother was well aware, that is not what young men are
looking for, especially if others are looking, and they are always looking.

What Arthur saw was what his friends would see: jaws that were too large, eyes too small, foreheads too low, teeth crooked, bosoms too big or too small, legs too short or hands too big. Girls with wealth and beauty were in short supply. Wealth will make up for a good deal, but not everything. Whoever was to be his wife would have to take her place in London’s society if he was to have any fun at all, let alone the respect of his peers, as he had realized with a shock when Flora said yes to his mad and panicky proposal. And children – there had been enough animal breeding on the estate going on during his childhood to know just how important heredity was. If a bitch, a filly or a mare ‘got out’ the line never ran true even though the particular mating had no issue. The bloodline was sullied. One had to marry a virgin, and Flora was certainly not that.

The Duke of Anglesey’s younger brother had married a very beautiful singer who was rumoured to have spent time in the Prince’s bed, and was accepted in society, but it seemed Royalty was exempted from the rule, and left no taint.

‘Mama,’ he said now, ‘not even to save the family fortune will I marry one of these. Do you really want a bearded woman to mother the Hedleigh grandchildren?’

‘You are too cruel,’ she said. She was looking at her most charming – plentiful light brown hair loosely piled on top of her small head, her bright, large blue eyes mischievous. He realized that in choosing Flora he had chosen someone very like his mother. The distasteful Dr Freud over in Vienna would have something to say about that. Something rather unpleasant, no doubt. Rosina would keep quoting the psychiatrist’s views on ‘sexuality’ and ‘neurosis’ over the dinner table, even when there were guests. It was most embarrassing.

‘May I remind you that your father married me for my money, and we have lived happily ever since?’ Isobel now said to her son.

‘But you were a beauty,’ he said. ‘You are,’ he corrected himself.

‘Then what are we to do?’ she asked. ‘Starve?’

‘Pater can sell his stables and stop gambling,’ he offered. ‘Rosina can stop giving money away. Money is such a vulgar subject, anyway.’

‘My dear boy,’ said his mother, ‘we are moving into a new century. The acceptance of vulgarity is the beginning of wisdom. I thought, of the two of you, you might be the one to live in the real world, but I see you do not. What is to become of us if you do not grow up and rather quickly? You are bright enough, just idle. Like your father, who is perfectly intelligent, but so easily diverted.’

‘I’ll go and see Baum if you like,’ said Arthur. ‘Perhaps he will lend Pater more. He’s rich as Croesus.’

‘Arthur,’ asked his mother, ‘do you even know the meaning of the word “interest”, as it relates to money?’

‘No,’ said Arthur. His mother sighed.

‘In order to lend,’ she said, ‘people have to be offered an inducement. It is normally money. The percentage of the original loan is known as simple interest. Compound interest is when interest is added to the principal, so that from that moment on, the interest that has been added also itself earns interest. And then of course favours can be asked on top of that. The Prince, for example, offers Mr Cassel honours in return for loans. This very year, and against the Queen’s wishes, Cassel was made a Knight Commander of the British Empire.’

‘Mother, that is a scandalous rumour. Her Majesty does only as her duty directs.’

‘I daresay,’ said his mother, ‘but you are very ignorant of the ways of the world. We have little to offer Mr Baum other than to receiving his wife into my drawing room to meet others with whom she can ingratiate herself, and so enter Society. There is no end to the ambitions of the children of Abraham.’

A most dishonourable thought flashed through Arthur’s mind, quickly to be dismissed. If his mother was to sacrifice her son to an unknown and plain heiress for the sake of money, perhaps she should consider sacrificing herself to Mr Baum? She was beautiful enough, though past her best years. It might work.

‘Your young lady friend, whoever she is,’ said his mother, ‘at least provides an honest service in return for her pay. Perhaps you could share her with a friend and halve the cost? No one will think less of you.’

Arthur was shaken. How on earth did his mother know about Flora? Of course: as ever, the servants’ hall. One imagined as a lover that one was invisible, but it was not the case. Others saw, looked, noticed, talked. Arthur usually and prudently asked Reginald to drop him off ‘somewhere in Mayfair’, but occasionally, if it were raining hard, he asked to be taken to Flora’s exact address. Reginald would take the news back to the servants’ hall. Someone, probably Grace the go-between, must have told his mother.

‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I don’t think this is a suitable conversation for you to be having with your son. It’s the kind of thing fathers are meant to talk about. Just don’t worry about things so, old thing. Something will turn up. We won’t starve. Pater wouldn’t let us.’

He declined to look further at the list drawn up by Grace.

‘Absurd,’ he said, and left the room and took a bath.

Something Turns Up

5.45 P.M. FRIDAY, 27TH OCTOBER 1899

It was Minnie O’Brien who turned up, only daughter of Billy and Tessa O’Brien of the Chicago stockyards. She was twenty-five, a slight fine-featured girl, with strong eyebrows which lent her face character and intelligence. She was delicate in her habits – ‘fussy’ according to her mother – her chin a little pronounced perhaps and her neck a little long, but her arms the right length for her body. She had little white hands, a bosom neither too pronounced nor too slight, and with the plentiful brown hair and blue wide eyes Arthur so favoured. Better still, from a young man’s point of view, she was without annoying ideas of social progress of the kind that made Rosina such difficult company: she liked to paint and draw and was interested in the history of the decorative arts. Her voice was soft and sweet, and her accent when she spoke was only slightly American, she had had the best elocution lessons money could buy in Chicago.

Even as Arthur left his mother’s side that afternoon, Minnie was driving round Belgravia, perched next to her mother Tessa in an old-fashioned four-wheeled growler, noisy but comfortable, provided by Brown’s hotel for visiting guests – Americans always asked for them; they were ‘cute’.

Tessa was a large, red-faced, energetic woman who spoke her mind and spoke it loudly; how she had produced so refined
and spiritual a girl as her daughter no one could understand. Though some of her cattier friends did murmur that on the occasion of the foundation of the Art Institute of Chicago – of which, as wife to a leading meat baron and philanthropist, Tessa was naturally a founder member – she had vanished for an hour or two behind the antiquities with a certain well-known English painter, Eyre Crowe, whose slave painting ‘Slaves Waiting for Sale’ had graced the walls of the Institute thereafter. The meaner would even search for likenesses and compare Minnie’s wide-apart eyes and strong brows with a sketch of Eyre Crowe also held in the Institute. Some said yes, some said no. And rumour had it that Billy O’Brien was not capable of producing a child. There had been some unfortunate accident in the stockyards when he was boy. Others said no, Billy had a gruff enough voice, didn’t he?

Tessa O’Brien’s husband Billy, broad, big-bellied, vigorous and ruddy-faced, had started in the stockyards at seventeen, was running a single abattoir at the early age of twenty-five, and five of them by the age of thirty. By the time he was forty, he was the capitalist conquistador of all Chicago, where the hogs, cows and sheep of the USA were gathered, slaughtered, packed and from thence dispatched. He was too busy to be jealous or possessive of his wife – either emotion would divert him from his main business of making money – but all knew that his daughter Minnie, so fragile and refined, was his darling. He kept her well away from the blood, splintered bone and occasional accidental human remain which went into the hamburgers for which the nation was now famous.