Habits of the House (19 page)

‘Very fancy, but when do I wear it?’ Tessa moaned. ‘What is a tea gown when it’s at home? Is it for the bedroom? Holy Mary, it seems made for a man to get into, rather than for a decent woman to put on. All these pesky buttons and bows. And Minnie will never have the patience for them.’

‘I must lend you Grace then,’ said her Ladyship, ‘to “unpesky” your dressing. Grace is my most excellent lady’s maid. I will have her take a servant’s room in Brown’s, and attend to both your needs while you become accustomed to our ways. You can trust her to know what to wear and when to wear it. She will see to your hair, cope with the hotel staff, remind you of your appointments and make sure you get there on time. I shall manage very well without her for a day or two.’

Tessa, who had lived all her life without a lady’s maid, was pleased enough to accept the offer, and further thrilled to receive Lady Isobel’s invitation when they’d returned laden to Brown’s – dinner with the Earl and the Countess of Dilberne in Belgrave Square in the presence of the Prince of Wales himself on Tuesday, December 17th.

‘Oh, Minnie,’ Tessa shrieked. ‘Now it’s dinner with Royalty. Play your cards nicely and this could always be your life. All this and a swanky London lady’s maid too. If my friends could see me now!’

In the Servants’ Hall

6 p.m. Tuesday, 7th November 1899

‘The nerve of it,’ said Grace. ‘And they’re neither of them any better than they ought to be, mother or daughter. Sending me off to Brown’s like a paper parcel.’

‘I thought you was a good friend of Mr Eddie’s,’ said Mr Neville.

‘That’s as may be,’ said Grace, ‘but it’s not the point. I should at least have been given warning. I don’t know what’s got into her lately.’

‘And I don’t know what you’ve got against her Ladyship suddenly,’ said Mrs Neville. ‘One moment you’re thick as thieves, the next you’re all moans.’

‘I’ve nothing whatsoever against her Ladyship, but I don’t like to be taken for granted. And I don’t want to see some wild American girl ending up as the Countess of Dilberne just because she’s got money,’ said Grace. ‘If you give respect, you deserve respect. But these days it’s go here and go there, do this and then the other, without so much as a please or a thank you, and no respect at all.’

‘Keep your hair on, Grace,’ said Mrs Neville. ‘If Miss Minnie is as bad as you say, Master Arthur will soon enough see through her.’

Reginald snorted and said Master Arthur had as much sense as a wire brush. Flora wasn’t half giving him the runaround.

‘Flora?’ asked Smithers. ‘Not that same Flora that was his Lordship’s fancy piece a while back?’

‘That’s the one,’ said Reginald, ‘not that Master Arthur knows that, and not that he needs to know. Or her Ladyship for that matter. So obvious but she never noticed.’

‘Nobody needs to know,’ agreed Mr Neville sharply. ‘We’ll have no more talk like that.’

‘Flora’s doing nicely then,’ said Elsie, ‘for someone not quite so young as she used to be.’

‘She is, but she’s keeping nicely,’ said Reginald. ‘Bathes in asses’ milk, I daresay.’

‘Perhaps someone ought to tell the American girl,’ said Elsie.

‘I may,’ said Grace. ‘Or I may not. I’ll think about it.’

‘She ought to be grateful if there’s another interest,’ said Reginald. ‘Otherwise Miss America will be worn out as an old rabbit within the week. I’m telling you. The things our Master Arthur gets up to…’

‘Not in front of Lily, if you please, young man,’ said Mr Neville.

It had taken only days and already the flower girl was plimming up and plumping out and beginning to look more half alive than half dead. Her nails were scrubbed, her scabs and rashes had vanished, and she now relished the daily baths that had at first made her shrink with fear of pneumonia. She managed a sweet and grateful smile as she swept up ashes and scrubbed pans. The staff regarded her with pride. She was their project and doing well. What would become of her they had no idea. They would keep her until either the mistress discovered she was feeding more staff than she knew about, and either then took her on as staff or ejected her, or Lily worked out some way of looking after herself. In the meanwhile
she was happy enough with a mattress in the cupboard under the stairs next to the big black central heating boiler.

‘She could always go to Miss Flora,’ suggested Reginald. ‘She’ll be looking for a maid soon, the way things are going.’

But Mrs Neville said no girl once under her roof would be allowed to go to the bad in such a way.

His Lordship Starts a Company

4 p.m. Tuesday, 7th November 1899

After his conversation with his bookmaker Robert took a cab down the Victoria Embankment and walked through to Lincoln’s Inn. His journey was not wasted. Baum happened to be at his desk, in his rather small and pokey offices when his Lordship turned up without warning at the door. Baum welcomed Robert in, but without the somewhat fulsome obsequiousness he had come to expect. In putting himself out so obviously as to call in person, rather than summon the lawyer back to Belgrave Square, Robert feared he had perhaps made a mistake. If one showed the slightest sign of weakness people got above themselves.

Not for the first time his Lordship wondered how he had happened to get so involved with Baum, this no doubt clever but unpredictable person, who wrung his hands like a character out of Dickens, lent you large sums of money at the drop of a hat, and yet made you feel you were to blame for his misfortunes, when actually it was the other way round.

Baum, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, had scarcely made the risk involved in the Syndicate’s Modder Kloof mine clear. The relationship between General Kruger of the Transvaal and the Boers of Natal was close, but no one had expected an outbreak of actual hostilities, let alone the possibility of actual sabotage. The might of the British Army
had seemed so assured: the Boers by comparison a mere captious rabble. No doubt Baum had got a fair commission out of the deal: more than fair, no doubt. Well, there was no point in beating about the bush. An attack was always the best policy. He got straight to the point.

‘Thought I’d drop by and see you, Baum,’ he said. ‘I’m not denying I owe you money, quite a lot of money. All the same I don’t take it kindly when you threaten me with foreclosure in front of my family and on my own front steps. Gentlemen do not behave like that.’

Baum seemed taken aback at such plain speaking. He visibly quailed. The Earl of Dilberne took the view that Baum couldn’t decide which way to jump. As it turned out, he apologized.

‘If I spoke too peremptorily, sir, please excuse me,’ Eric Baum said, with considerable dignity. ‘Whatever may have been said was in the heat of the moment. Now, how can I help you today?’ His Lordship adjusted himself to this development, and took his time; he gazed around the office with an affectation of purpose that was fairly convincing. Mr Baum had a female secretary, of which Robert vaguely disapproved, feeling that the presence of a woman in an office could not be conducive to efficient business, but she did bring tea and biscuits, and was a pretty enough lass.

‘I have a strategy, Baum,’ he said. ‘Gold and diamonds are all very well, but they attract trouble. They speak of easy riches. There are other less spectacular valuables to be found underground, as, with your background, you will know very well.’ And he waxed lyrical on the theme of the rich seams of coal to be found further North in the Limpopo. He had recently read reports in the House of Lords library as to the promise of these deposits. He knew the sort of thing to say: his father-in-law had been much involved setting up the Newcastle
industry. ‘That is most interesting,’ said Mr Baum, ‘but coal mines, like gold mines can get flooded, either by accident or design. It is too risky.’

‘But mines can be drained,’ said Robert. ‘Time was when two weeks was the longest any mine could remain under water without being abandoned; wooden props disintegrate and weaken quickly under pressure; iron props corrode and rust. The mine, be it coal, diamonds or gold, collapses. But add manganese to iron and iron survives both water and pressure. So now let us mine for manganese as well as the rest. Then a flooding becomes not disaster, but inconvenience. The structure, once drained, remains sound. We have lost the Modder Kloof mine, but let it be the last one in all South Africa to go.’

Baum stared and said nothing for a while.

‘I’d very much like you to join with me in this venture, Mr Baum,’ said Robert. ‘My name will carry weight with investors. We cannot be seen to run scared just because a few Dutch hotheads run wild. It is not patriotic.’

‘Baum and Dilberne,’ said Baum, speculatively.

‘Dilberne and Baum,’ said his Lordship. ‘Rare earths, manganese, chromium. And copper. Progress is progress. A small local war will not stop the exploitation of the mineral wealth of the colonies. If our coal mines are also producing manganese others will be slow to notice. Others will need what we can sell them. Mr Baum, there are more uses for rare minerals in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

‘I too saw Sarah Bernhardt play the Prince of Denmark earlier in the year. My wife insists on taking me to the theatre. She is very literary. That bit was near the beginning, before I nodded off.’

‘Then we have something in common, Mr Baum. I too fell asleep.’

‘We have just moved our address,’ observed Mr Baum casually, though Robert detected a slight undercurrent of threat. ‘Perhaps her Ladyship’s invitation, which my wife expects, may have gone astray?’

‘I will ask my wife to be sure that another one goes out at once, Mr Baum. She has been very busy. The Prince is coming to dinner in a week or so, but I have no doubt the numbers can be stretched.’

‘Please thank the Countess indeed on my wife’s behalf, sir. Thank you.’ He paused. His Lordship nodded, and waited. ‘You are suggesting I go in with you on this business deal? You assume I will lend you yet more money in order that I, with you, can develop a plethora of mines across South Africa?’

‘I couldn’t put it more clearly myself,’ said Robert, blithely.

‘I should, I think, put the matter to Sir Ernest Cassel. There is a lot of money involved.’

‘I would be thoroughly obliged,’ said Robert, unsure as to whether Baum was referring more to the projected venture, or to his own existing debt.

‘My wife,’ said Mr Baum, ‘would be charmed to meet the Prince.’

It was a pity, thought Robert, that his new partner had no idea at all how to behave. But there you were: the new century was coming in a very few weeks. It would bring any number of horrors with it. Arthur would in time have to deal with the new world. He trusted that the boy was better armed to face it than he, who had been formed by the old world, could hope to be.

‘But naturally, she must meet him!’ said Robert. ‘His Highness too loves a visit to the theatre. They can talk about
Hamlet
.’

‘I don’t think that is necessary,’ said Mr Baum. ‘It would be enough for her to be in the same room.’

And they left the subject, while Robert wondered how on earth he could save the Prince from Mr and Mrs Baum, who probably had had to shave her head upon marriage and wear a wig. Isobel was always slightly reluctant to host a dinner for the Prince of Wales in any case: she claimed royalty bought with it a great deal of nervous exhaustion, extra staff, and extreme care in seating. Robert knew the Prince preferred a good shoot, or a day at the races to a ball or a dinner, and when in London he’d just as soon go to a club in the company of a few friends until the early hours, and thence depart on his own for more clandestine adventures. But he was not averse to a good dinner and had been known to summon Cook and congratulate her on her culinary skill; no wonder he was so popular with the people. The common touch, it was described. He noticed detail. His energy was formidable: his friends, including Robert, were for the most part always glad to get home to their wives and their own beds. He gazed at the mottled bark of a leafless plane tree outside the window. It looked leprous in the fading light. To be a Prince, or the friend of a Prince in any century was always a tricky business. These days the violence of hostility was metaphorical rather than literal, delivered by newspapers or angry husbands, not hard steel, red-hot pokers up the posterior, or butts of Malmsey wine, but it was always there, waiting. Human nature did not

‘Thank you for your visit, my Lord,’ said Mr Baum, and went on to say that there was a great deal of paperwork to be done, capital to be raised, others would need to be involved, but that he thought it quite possible that Sir Ernest Cassel
would take a positive view. ‘Your initial debt could well be, shall we say,
subsumed
, into this future project of ours. It would not, however, be proper for me to represent both our interests so I will ask Mr Courtney to look after yours.’

The enigmatic Mr Courtney of Courtney and Baum proved to be a respectable-looking City gentleman in his mid-sixties, with a splendid moustache and an unnerving resemblance to the late Mr Gladstone, which Robert held mildly against him – Mr Gladstone having been a Liberal: but he could see the irrationality of damning a man simply on the grounds of his facial ‘brush’. Mr Courtney asked whether the Countess would want to be involved in the scheme and his Lordship said very much so, at which Baum said, ‘Her Ladyship to my knowledge has a very good business head. By no means always the case with women. You are most fortunate, sir, in your wife.’ Robert found this to be rather impertinent, but then so much about Mr Baum was, that one more offence scarcely mattered.

The setting sun emerged from a cloud and its rays made the dull mahogany of Baum’s desk gleam. The sense of a weight being lifted, which Robert had only known with half his mind to be there, caught him by surprise.

Mr Courtney left, and Eric Baum and the Earl talked casually about the St Anthony’s Cup at Newbury, about which Mr Baum was surprisingly knowledgeable. Robert had not seen Baum as a racing man, but at least, if as now seemed inevitable, he would have to be introduced to the Prince, they could talk about horses. Heaven knew what Mrs Baum would have to say to anyone. Mr Baum wished his Lordship well in his flutter.