Habits of the House (35 page)

‘Let the idolators win? Lock up the house of God? Deny the faithful their solace? For the sake of some wormy oak carving and the relics of a false religion? Are you stupid as well as plain, Adela?’ And the Hon. Rev. seized up the Bible and went to his study leaving his breakfast uneaten. He was even taller than his brother Robert, Earl of Dilberne, and as fiery tempered as his brother was genial.

‘Now see what you’ve done,’ Elise said to her daughter, more in the hope of appeasing her husband than reproaching the girl, and followed him through to the study.

As for Adela, she ate her egg and toast before anything worse happened, finished her father’s, tackled the next two eggs – he always had three eggs and her mother two to her one – swept all available crumbs into a napkin and went out of the Rectory into the frosty morning to feed the robin, who sat waiting on his usual perch on the lowest limb of the oak tree. She was practising thankfulness, and managed to thank Jesus for giving her the parents he had chosen for her, though this morning it took some effort. ‘Plain’ and ‘stupid’ had made their mark.

A Letter to the Countess from the Duchess

Tom Fletcher the postman liked his new round very much. It amounted to promotion, though they paid you no more. Here in Belgravia the streets were wide, the houses large and grand, their numbers could be easily read and the letterboxes were under porticos, out of the rain and wind. Far better working here than in the City, where streets had been narrow and twisted, houses and offices crammed together on top of each other, separated by complex networks of alleyways, where horses knocked you off your bike, or splattered the ground in front of your tyres with steaming soft manure, and such numbering as there was, wholly irrational. Also, the letters that came in Belgravia were more interesting than the ones that passed between office and office. One could scarcely begrudge their delivery.

The gold wax seal on this particular envelope was stamped with two crescent moons and a sun, and had been recognized by the sub-postmistress at Mount Pleasant sorting office as coming from the desk of Consuelo, the Duchess of Marlborough. Consuelo was Mistress of the Queen’s Robes, although she was only twenty-four. She had provided her young husband with the two children he required and now had time to spare, and good looks and style aplenty.

The letter was addressed to Isobel, Countess of Dilberne, 17 Belgrave Square, who also moved in the highest of circles, and was something of a fashion icon: perhaps it contained news of what the Queen Consort would wear on her coronation in the New Year? What the dress would look like, the jewels, the possible new crown, were already a source of speculation, even before a definite date was fixed. The women of the nation wondered and chafed at the delay; the men were less concerned. Enough that there was to be a day’s holiday and free drinks all round when it happened.

Be that as it may, Vera at the sorting office had tapped her nose when she’d handed over the two crescent moons and the sun and said, ‘Keep your ears open, eh, Fletcher, when you call by number seventeen?’

‘Don’t I always,’ Fletcher said, and delivered the letter to the servants’ entrance in the basement, instead of the front door, and had a cup of tea with Mrs Welsh the cook while he was at it, and Lily the lady’s maid, who looked down her nose at him but whom he rather fancied.

When Reginald the head footman finally brought the letter up to the library, he found Lady Isobel the Countess and her young daughter-in-law, Lady Minnie the Viscountess, packing Christmas gifts for the post. Mrs Neville the housekeeper stood by to fetch brown paper, string and sealing wax as required. Reginald thought the group would look well in a Christmas-card scene, their Ladyships’ heads bent together over the task, a good fire burning in the grate and glittering on their diamond brooches, and the deep red vellum of bound books putting a pink glow on their winter-pale complexions. Both were still in half-mourning for the Old Queen – the Earl being a stickler for convention – which meant that some pale lavender and dove grey did not go amiss amongst the black. The two Ladyships looked pretty and cheerful enough, but it was Reginald’s experience that for the Hedleigh family such scenes existed only to be quickly shattered by some momentous and unanticipated event.

‘Adela Hedleigh, of the Rectory at Yatbury,’ remarked Minnie, reading the label written out by Mrs Neville. ‘A maiden aunt, perhaps?’ She had been a Hedleigh wife for more than a year, and new relatives seemed to keep appearing. No one had taken the trouble to list them for her convenience. Social rules were much more complicated here than they were back home in Chicago. Minnie’s father Billy O’Brien gladly welcomed everyone, relative or friend, into his heart and home unless they misbehaved, when he would throw them out, often physically, or even get others to do worse. Her mother Tessa was the same. There was not the layered politeness there was here, no saying things nobody meant, nor was quite expected to believe.

Lady Isobel laughed and said Adela might well end up a maiden aunt, considering her inheritance. At the moment she was an unmarried girl, fifteen or sixteen, and his Lordship’s niece, only daughter of Robert’s youngest brother Edwin. Edwin had gone into the Church and was reckoned rather strange, indeed, even quite mad and certainly not very nice. He and Robert had had a dreadful quarrel: Edwin had behaved disgracefully. The first son had died in a shocking accident along with his father, which was how Robert, the second son, had come into the title. Yes, there was another brother, Alfred, the third son, who had gone into the army and was now a Brigadier in India, and was mildly preferable to his brother, but not greatly so. ‘Neither of them knows how to behave,’ said Isobel.

‘To know how to behave’ was something Minnie, still somewhat awed by the titled company she found herself in, tried very hard to do, and hoped she was succeeding. She longed to know what was in the letter Reginald had brought up, with its great gold wax seal, but knew better than to ask. ‘
Pas trop de zèle
,’ she had heard his Lordship say more than once, ‘
Surtout, pas trop de zèle
.’ Above all, not too much enthusiasm.

‘It’s not the poor girl’s fault that she has the parents she has,’ remarked Lady Isobel, ‘so I send her a Christmas gift every year. It may well be that one day Adela will seek her family out, though I’m sure one rather dreads the possibility. Edwin is good-looking enough but his wife is very plain and silent, the girl is bound to inherit from her, and Robert cannot abide plain and silent women.’

Minnie felt this was so unfair a judgement that she was driven to speak up.

‘But if she is good enough to receive a Christmas gift, perhaps she is good enough to receive an invitation, even for Christmas itself? Families should be together at Christmas time.’

At which her mother-in-law looked at her a little coldly and said, ‘Poor little Minnie. You must be missing your mother,’ which was another way of saying, since Minnie’s mother was so awful and everyone knew it,
shut up and don’t presume
. It was the merest flash of disapproval, but Minnie felt her cheeks burning and tears rise to her eyes. And she did, she did, she missed her mother like anything and she longed to be back with the gypsies-oh. The tune kept coming back to her these days, of the song her mother had sung to her when she was a child going to sleep.

Oh what care I for your goosefeather bed,

With the sheets turned down so comely-oh,

Oh what care I for your house and your land,

I’m off with the raggle-taggle gypsies-oh!

Those weren’t the right words: there was a line she’d got wrong, which she couldn’t remember, and perhaps it was as well. It was Arthur she wanted, but Arthur was down at Dilberne Court in the country, with his combustion engines and garages, constructing his race circuit in the estate grounds and finding out what it was like to be Managing Director of J.A.C, the Jehu Automobile Company, and designing the Arnold Model 2, while she, Minnie, kept the Countess company. The Countess was charm and courtesy itself and the shopping trips were fun, and Minnie tried to be interested in fashion, but really she was not.

Reginald coughed to draw attention to the letter, still unopened, and Isobel deigned to break the seal and open it.

‘It’s from Consuelo,’ said Isobel. ‘The seal is that of the Duchess of Marlborough, do you see?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Minnie. Consuelo was a great beauty, came from New York, was a Vanderbilt, and had come to her marriage to the Duke with a railroad fortune. She, Minnie, came from Chicago, was a mere pork-scratchings heiress and her father had endowed less money on his daughter than anyone had hoped, the bottom having suddenly fallen out of the hog market. Railroads, of course, continued to grow from strength to strength. But the whole world knew that when Sunny Marlborough left the church with Consuelo, after their truly grand New York wedding, he had turned to his new wife and told her in the cab that he was in love with someone else, but needed some of the Vanderbilt fortune to save Blenheim Palace from dereliction.

At least when Arthur and she, Minnie, had left St Martin-in-the-Fields after their wedding, Arthur had nibbled her ear and said he loved her, and only her and would for ever: at least she had Arthur’s love if not quite enough of his attention. And Arthur was always full of good cheer, whereas the reason the Duke was known as Sunny was not only because he was formerly the Earl of Sunderland, but because he had such a miserable, unsmiling nature. Another English trick amongst the titled – to say the opposite of what was meant and assume everyone around got the joke. Well, one learnt, but one had always to be on one’s toes.

Oh What Care I for Your Goosefeather Bed?

‘I’m so very fond of Consuelo,’ Isobel was saying now. ‘She is so very much like a younger Alexandra, has this very long neck, wears chokers with great style, has a tiny waist, a sweet disposition and, loving good jewellery as she does, is just the right person to be Mistress of the Queen’s Robes. How can she not be, Sunny having been appointed Lord High Steward for the occasion; that is to say in overall charge? I do think it is possible to overdo the diamond-choker style, mind you, just a little vulgar and ostentatious. I fear for the Queen. If Consuelo has her way, she’ll have the poor dear’s front so awash with jewels there’ll not be a scrap of flesh showing. I rather wish you could develop a taste for diamonds, Minnie my dear, but you are quite determined never to glitter. Never mind, we love you as you are – and so, apparently, does Consuelo.’

Consuelo, it seemed, had in her letter required Minnie to participate in the Coronation. She was to walk beside Isobel as they processed down the central aisle at the Abbey directly behind the four Duchesses – Marlborough, Portland, Sutherland and Montrose – who were to hold the canopy for Alexandra. The two ladies of Dilberne, both beauties in their own right (‘
Oh, Consuelo is such a flatterer,
’ said Isobel, with a slight rise of her eyebrows), were to make sure nothing went amiss – crowns could slip, tiaras go awry, jewels might fall, ermine trims tear – and to make things right as circumstances required.

‘In other words, Minnie, you and I are to act as lady’s maids. Next thing Consuelo will be asking us to carry needle and thread!’

‘Little Minnie from Chicago,’ was all Minnie said. ‘If my friends could see me now!’

‘I hope your friends are not so ordinary,’ said Isobel, severely, ‘as to be impressed.’

Minnie did not explain she had been joking, what was the point? When jokes fell flat better let them lie where they fell. Her father Billy had often told her so. This was not just something else to take for granted. She, little Minnie, the bad girl from Chicago with her unfortunate past, was to walk down the aisle of Westminster Abbey behind the Queen of England and an assortment of duchesses, watched by kings and queens assembled from all over the world, and by the highest statesmen in the land, in all the pomp and circumstance to which humanity could aspire. How could she grumble? She was privileged beyond belief.

Isobel went on reading: ‘She tells me the ceremony is to be on June the 26
^th
,’ she said, suddenly and sharply, lifting to the light her pale, pretty face, with its high cheekbones and fashionable little mouth so very much in the mode, ‘and that Balfour is to make an announcement next week. But I already know that. Why would she think I might not? Robert told me last night. Oh, all these Palace people with their plots and plans and messages from on high!’

Reginald coughed and asked her Ladyship if there was to be a reply, and when she said no, clicked his heels and left the room – no doubt, it occurred to Minnie, to go down immediately to some fly-by-night betting house on Millbank. There he would place a bet on the 26
^th
of June as the day of the Coronation, since bets were open on it, and the exact date currently the nation’s preoccupation. Reginald, in Minnie’s opinion, was very much a raggle-taggle-gypsy-oh, dark-haired and handsome and not to be trusted, though Isobel seemed to. The trouble with assuming that servants were invisible, springing into life only when needed, was that no one bothered to keep secrets from the lower orders. Anything upstairs knew one minute, downstairs made it their business to know the next.

Her Ladyship went back to the business of wrapping up parcels. Minnie wondered what Adela of the Rectory at Yatbury would be getting. Some kind of dress or cloak, she imagined. She caught a glimpse of what looked like deep red velvet and a flash of very expensive-looking Brussels lace as it was folded into its box. Minnie helped arrange the sleeves neatly and nicely. It was not in Lady Isobel’s nature to save money when it came to clothes, even for poor relatives. It would be the most expensive Bond Street could manage. The eventual brown-paper-and-string parcel – the string was green, which did look a little festive and was a little more expensive – still looked rather workaday, so Minnie cheered things up by adding a row of the bright, gummed-paper stickers of garlanded reindeers her mother had sent over in a parcel from Chicago. Isobel winced slightly when she saw them. But then Isobel winced at quite a lot of things.