Habits of the House (5 page)

Arthur filled in the ensuing silence by remarking that in his opinion, whatever anyone said, the Boers were an undisciplined rabble of farmers, that Kruger was no leader but a bible-thumper who believed the Earth was flat, and that he, Arthur, had it on good authority from army friends that the garrison in Ladysmith numbered at least five thousand disciplined and trained troops and was well prepared to withstand any attack. They would give the enemy a good thrashing into the bargain.

‘Ha,’ said his father, eventually. ‘Hum. I admire your patriotism and spirit, Arthur, but it is a mistake to underrate an enemy just because you don’t like him. This is hardly good
news. Having no concept of the rules of war might turn out to be to the Boers’ advantage.’ He pointed out to his son that though Ladysmith was probably safe enough, five thousand troops trained in tight formation fighting and armed only with single-shot rifles might do well enough to repel savages and their spears, but the Boers would no doubt have Mauser magazine rifles and Krupp field guns. It was certainly an unsporting way of fighting – simply mowing down an enemy – but highly effective when it came to it. Lord Lansdowne at the War Office had assured the House that Lee-Metford bolt action rifles would soon be on the way to Natal, but ‘soon’, when it came to army procurement, could drag on for a long, long time.

Lady Isobel looked at her husband admiringly. He spoke fluently and so well; he was turning into a politician. Even his brothers would come to think well of him.

‘You describe it as “unsporting”, Father,’ said Rosina. ‘How can you describe it in such a way? It is savage; it is barbarous. Is it not bad enough to kill young men one at a time – but ten at a time! Though I daresay young women will get along well enough without them, if that is what they have to do. Men have only themselves to blame.’

‘Rosina,’ said her mother, somewhat acidly, ‘please leave such sentiments for your parrot to preach.’ Cook had left bones in the haddock. That was shockingly careless, but the kind of thing that happened if normal household timetables were disturbed.

‘Well, Mr Baum,’ said her husband, putting down his napkin and preparing to leave the table. ‘I am sure this is all very interesting, but as things stand there is very little we can do about the situation in Ladysmith. We’ll just have to leave it to the man on the spot to deal with – Sir George White, I
believe. But thank you for coming in such haste to bring up the dire news. No need to panic – and the signing of documents can surely wait.’

‘The report is that Sir George is trapped inside the town with his forces, sir,’ said Baum, still smiling. ‘And that not only Ladysmith, but the area for thirty miles around is in enemy hands. That area includes the Modder Kloof mine.’ His Lordship returned to the table and sat down. Elsie sighed. Now she ought to replace his napkin with a clean one, but had come to the end of the pile. Perhaps his Lordship would not notice. He was speaking genially.

‘Why didn’t you say so at once? But White is a most reliable fellow. Won the Victoria Cross in Afghanistan. He is smart and a brave fellow: I have no doubt but that he’ll fight his way out and clear the area. It won’t hold up production at Modder Kloof for more than a week or so at worst. He’ll be looking out for Syndicate interests. And if White does fail, and I don’t see that he can, I believe General Buller is waiting in the wings. Remember Redvers Buller, Isobel? Came to dinner once. Much appreciative of the grouse. Got a mouthful of shot. Tall chap? Went shooting with him once or twice. Bit of a ditherer, true. Managed to shoot his own dog. That went the rounds. But nothing wrong with him as a soldier. He has a VC.’

‘Robert,’ said her Ladyship, ‘I have a very busy day ahead of me. We have a dinner tonight. Mr Baum brings us serious news, though I rather think it could well have waited until later in the day. Indeed, I daresay we will read it in tomorrow’s
Times
. But is this the news you have been trying to tell us with such urgency, Mr Baum? Or is there more? Is it possible that our gold mine has been compromised in some way and you are reluctant to tell us?’

‘That is indeed the case, Lady Isobel,’ said Mr Baum. ‘I too am to have a busy day. The Modder Kloof mine, a considerable part of your family investment in the Midas Gold Syndicate, in which I too I may say have a significant interest, has been sabotaged, looted and I believe flooded by criminal gangs of natives egged on no doubt by the Dutch rebels. All production has ceased and the native workforce has fled.’

The delectable Lady Isobel, removing the silver fork carefully from her delicate lips, had paled slightly at the news, but otherwise let no emotion show on her face. Mr Baum was sorry for her sake that this had happened, but he had warned the Earl of the risks, though with hindsight perhaps not strongly enough. The Earl had been in a hurry to raise funds. Initially he had been lucky, as his Lordship so often was, and a promising seam of gold was struck at Modder Kloof almost immediately the mine was opened. The financial danger – at the time simply that a mine could be opened where no gold was, and the investment lost – had been averted. The geologists had been proved right; the sandstone and shale layers had opened up and revealed their glitter. The future had seemed assured. The Dilberne fortune safe. Now this.

Well, he had done his best. He was just the money man. What did he know of war and politics? Dilberne, with his close connections at both the Colonial and War Offices, should surely have anticipated what would happen next. True, the Transvaal bristled with troops protecting the interests of British investment in diamonds and gold, following Cecil Rhodes and de Beers wherever they led, but perhaps their Empire was not after all as invincible as they assumed? As for my loan, thought Mr Baum, that will be the last of their considerations. They will think only of themselves.

‘I have to tell you that the dividends expected yesterday by
telegraphic transfer did not arrive in the bank,’ said Mr Baum. ‘I hoped it was some technical error but after today’s communications I fear it is more than that. Gold has been stolen rather than shipped, and production had been halted.’

If Mr Baum had hoped for cries of alarm and despair he was disappointed. All that happened was that the whole family stared at him with slightly raised eyebrows, as if he were in some way out of order, had committed some grievous lapse in taste. Then his Lordship stood once again, smiled and spoke gently but firmly.

‘As I say, thank you for bringing us this news, Mr Baum. And now you must have a very busy day in front of you.’ He remained standing, giving Mr Baum no option but to get to his feet and leave. His Lordship’s napkin fell to the floor as he stood. It was unused and Elsie thought she could get away with folding and smoothing it and putting it back.

Baum reached the door and then turned back.

‘Good breakfast, what!’ said the Earl, still smiling.

‘It may be necessary for me to call in your debt to me,’ said Mr Baum, still smiling. He was learning fast. ‘Because I too am of course affected by the news.’

The Earl’s smile remained unaffected. Mr Baum left.

Elsie went with him and showed him out. By rights she should have fetched Reginald but the circumstances seemed to be such that a quick exit seemed appropriate.

‘
Goyim
,’ Mr Baum muttered. ‘All insane!’ and actually spat on the steps. Elsie ran downstairs and gave the servants’ hall the news of the Dilberne’s downfall. William the groom, a London man, newly employed, was fetched from the stables to wash down the front steps. The Dilberne servants saw no reason to expose themselves to unpleasantness when Londoners were available. Smithers went back up to the
drawing room to help Elsie clear away and find out what was going on.

‘Smithers,’ said the Countess of Dilberne, ‘kindly ask Mrs Neville to deduct sixpence from Elsie’s wages. His Lordship should have been handed a fresh napkin when he returned to the table.’

‘Yes my Lady,’ said Smithers. She would of course do no such thing. Her Ladyship would soon enough forget all about it when she returned to her usual sunny mood, and Elsie was tried enough by circumstance as it was.

Après le Déluge

9.50 a.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899

The Dilbernes remained sitting at table in silence after Baum had left.

‘Should you not be off to the House, my dear?’ enquired Isobel eventually. ‘You mustn’t let your day’s work be unravelled by that appalling little man.’

‘Not worth going. Fitzmaurice is speaking. He’ll use the opportunity to gloat over the Ladysmith news, and blame the ghost of Gladstone for everything. There’s the first reading of the Exportation of Arms Bill but Salisbury will have it thrown out. The majority will be narrow but it will be enough; I am not needed today.’

Rosina enquired as to what murderous end this particular Bill had been devised and her father replied it was the first reading of a bill to restrict the export of arms and materials that might damage the interests of her Majesty’s forces abroad. If Salisbury had it thrown out it would be in the nation’s interests: its terms of reference were too wide; it could for example interfere with the sale of coal abroad, coal being used to fuel enemy warships. Rosina should not look for bad intentions where they were absent.

Rosina remarked she did not care at all for the dealers of death and destruction and the sooner the bill was passed, the better.

Arthur said it was just as well women didn’t have the vote: if Rosina did she’d only vote Liberal, just to annoy. Women were so emotional: they let nice feelings get in the way of practicality.

Her Ladyship then said Rosina should put loyalty to her family before loyalty to the variety of eccentric causes she espoused. She asked Robert what the Prince’s view on the Arms Bill was, and her husband replied, with unusual asperity, that he didn’t see what that had to do with anything.

Isobel remarked, lightly, that she would not want her husband’s friendship with the Prince to influence his political judgement in any way. Nor would she want that friendship to have anything at all to do with her husband’s ability, at a time of coalition, to veer the House’s decision one way or another. It seemed to her that the voting might be rather marginal.

‘My dear,’ said her husband, ‘leave politics and financial matters to me, and concern yourself with the arrangements for tonight’s dinner, will you?’

It was as near as his parents had ever come, at least in Arthur’s presence, to having what the lower orders – or so Grace had once told him – called ‘a row’. He had been thinking of his breakfast more than the consequences of the news the lawyer bought and had switched off as soon as he realised his own debts were not the subject of any particular upset. Something about the gold mine outside Ladysmith? Looted, flooded? But it was abroad; obviously things would not go smoothly there. His father was always indulging in mad, impractical schemes, and always oddly out of date. The diamond boom was over; gold was a flash in the pan. The future was in mechanisation, but the older generation found it hard to understand change. When his father died and he
came into the title he would probably get rid of yet more estate acres, they being no source of income at all in the face of food imports from abroad, a trend he could see steadily increasing. Though he could see a future in setting up an off-road circuit for auto racing and using the surplus acres for a track. Road racing had already been banned in France – too many fatalities, over which people made a dreadful fuss – but would eventually overtake horse racing in popularity.

He would keep Dilberne Court, of course, whatever happened: he had that much sensibility of family in him, whatever his father thought. Pater saw him as a frivolous idiot, and for some rather perverse reason of his own, he, Arthur, had enjoyed playing up to the role. Now that it seemed his father was the idiot, investing the family money in some harebrained scheme, he might need to present his serious side. Why on earth had Mr Baum been chosen as an advisor? Was his father so influenced by his new friend the Prince that he must take his advice in everything? Baum was good enough when it came to trivial matters like tailors’ bills and gambling debts, but mightier matters should surely be left in the hands of experienced Christians. Cunning was no match for wisdom. And his mother, she was the one with her head screwed on properly, not his father. He marvelled at her diplomacy: now she just smiled equably and ‘the row’ dissipated.

The brief burst of animation over, all fell silent. Elsie returned to the room and started clearing the remaining dishes from the sideboard with the kind of clatter that suggested everyone should vacate the room and get on with their lives. Nor, to Arthur’s surprise, did his mother reproach her or mention the matter of the missing fresh napkin. Maids had been fired for less.

‘Very good, Elsie,’ said her Ladyship. ‘There is a very great deal to be done today. Please ask Mrs Neville and Cook to see me later in the morning room, and send for Grace.’ Elsie went. Again silence fell.

Grace, thought Arthur. She was his mother’s favourite and rightly so. She was intelligent, useful and loyal. He did not think he had behaved badly to her. She had more or less offered herself: he had not seduced her; she had been more experienced than he was: he was fourteen and just discovering the joys of sex: she was fifteen, and in the silly, daring patch girls could go through, of whatever class. One thing had led to another, over a summer. He’d gone off to Eton, she had been promoted – or so he supposed: now she wore a starched and fluted cap and opened the front door instead of a plain floppy one in which she made the beds and emptied the pots – and had become stiff, formal and unwelcoming. The event was never referred to after that by word or glance. Perhaps she had realised, as he had, what she had to lose. She had certainly seemed to stop giggling over the years. He stopped thinking about Grace. He would rather think about combustion engines; they were less puzzling than women. He couldn’t wait to get back down to the garage.

Robert’s hand stretched out to take Isobel’s. She closed hers on his. The children looked in wonder at such a rare demonstration of love and trust.