Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton (14 page)

Aunt Doll was telling how a beggar – a distracted woman – had stopped her at the bakehouse door that morning and asked for alms. On being given a piece of bread and cheese instead, the pretended madwoman had recovered her wits sufficiently to say such things to poor Aunt Doll as flesh and blood never heard before.

‘Which will teach you, I trust, not to encourage these filthy, barbarous folk, my dear Dorothy,' commented Agatha Trimble incisively.

Aunt Doll's hands trembled. The only way to endure Agatha Trimble was to regard her as a joke. Her late husband had evidently been deficient in the necessary sense of humour, for he had died within three months of their marriage, leaving his large and unalluring widow just sufficiently badly off to make it obligatory for her richer relations to offer her a home, and with sufficiently independent means to enable her to be insufferably rude.

Aunt Doll was no match for Agatha. But now, emboldened by the presence of her niece, who was bound by ties of kinship and affection to support her, she said:

‘Barbara dear I must recommend you to lock up your silver dragée box. I peeked into it today to see if I should make you some more sugar-plums and I found only one solitary sugar-plum left. I believe you have not sat in the little wainscoat room this last week, so I fear one of the serving-maids has been dipping her fingers into it.'

Aunt Doll was as well aware as everyone else in the household of Agatha Trimble's inordinate greed for sweetmeats, and her total lack of scruple and delicacy in helping herself to any that she found unguarded, and she rejoiced now to see the dull flush that suffused her enemy's heavily jowled cheeks.

Barbara said in her smooth low voice, ‘Thank you, Aunt Doll. I will speak to Housekeeper about it.'

She rose with one of her swift, unexpected movements and went to the ebony cabinet, ostensibly to select another strand of silk, in reality to prevent herself from betraying in some violent manner the extreme exasperation that seethed within her.

These women with their puerile chatter of physics and ailments, of housekeeping and servants' misdemeanours, of local births and funerals – was it possible that she had lived five years among them and preserved her reason? For five years their trivialities had buzzed in her ears … ‘A black velvet tippet. Every gentlewoman who wishes to make a show in the world has one …' ‘He is a servant fit in all respects to serve a gentleman …' ‘Seville oranges and Malaga
lemons at the present price are too dear for my purse …' ‘The poor lady was brought to her bed a month before her time … ' ‘They gave the old gentleman a very worthy funeral with scutcheons and burnt wine and biscuits in plenty.'

There was no end of their supply of small talk; it flowed on as incessant and as senseless as the river below the house, bearing away on its surface, so Barbara had sometimes felt in a spasm of helpless fury, little fragments of her own youth and vitality.

If she could have felt a hearty dislike for one of them (such as she had felt almost from her wedding day for her sister-in-law Henrietta Kingsclere) their company would have been more endurable, but not one of them was worthy of her mettle. Even bullying old Agatha deferred to her as the mistress of the manor, dispenser of comforts and hospitality. Aunt Doll was her sometimes peevish but on the whole willing slave. Her sister-in-law Paulina would not serve Barbara as either confidante or rival. She had grown into a handsome enough girl, with her regular features, clear colouring and level brows, but, Barbara thought impatiently, she seemed to belong to an outmoded generation. She would have been at home during the heroic and strenuous days of the Civil War. She wore her brown hair more plainly than was consistent with fashion, preferred a riding habit to any other attire, and led a silent, reserved life of her own in the library and stables.

As for the Dowager Lady Skelton, she accepted her daughter-in-law's graceful manners and dutiful ways at their face value. Undistinguished in appearance herself, she was not a little bedazzled by the beauty of her son's wife.

Even the fact that Barbara had so far presented Sir Ralph with nothing more substantial than two early miscarriages, had not shaken her pride in her daughter-in-law. She was confident that before long her ‘dear children' would be blessed with a sweet brave babe, to their own and the family's infinite content. Next time, dear Barbara must make much of her dear self, and not hazard herself in the least degree either by riding or dancing. She was collecting a formidable array of nauseating prescriptions in readiness for that auspicious moment.

Barbara herself did not know if she regretted her childlessness or not. Childbirth might have impaired her supple and elegant figure, nor could she share her mother-in-law's enthusiasm for the prospect of a child of Sir Ralph's begetting. On the other hand she resented being denied anything that might have added to her consequence, any cause for triumphing over the blonde complacency of Henrietta Kingsclere. And, in the prevailing tedium of her life, she would almost have welcomed childbirth's exciting, elemental pain. As it was, the carved cradle that had rocked generations of infant Skeltons to sleep remained as empty and cold as Barbara Skelton's heart.

It astonished, outraged, Barbara to look back over the five years that had passed since her wedding day, that day which she had naïvely believed to be the gateway to a dazzling future. How aimlessly they had crawled by, sluggard as an earthworm.

Her first experience of her husband's caresses had been almost ludicrously disappointing. Habit had not made his marital attentions more agreeable to her. She regarded
them as a tedious necessity to be endured with as good a grace as possible.

There had been some satisfaction at first in the new importance of her married state and in her position as lady of the manor. But this had soon staled. Barbara had intended and expected since childhood to make a good match. What then? For what end and to what purpose had her body flowered to its present perfection, her face achieved its present curious loveliness? To preside at Sir Ralph's table, sit through the solemn stately meals, to entertain his worthy, usually dull guests, listening with smiling lips and stupefied mind to talk of Quarter and Petty Sessions,
²
of vagrants and recusants, of poachers and tenants, crops, the importation of Irish cattle, the Popish Plot and Exclusion Bill;
³
to hear the family chaplain droning the same prayers morning after morning; to sit in the family pew in Maiden Worthy church Sunday after Sunday, submerged beneath a stream of turgid piety; to distribute alms to the deserving poor, to supervise the making of the Christmas plum pies and plum porridge, the work of the stillroom and brewery and the spring-cleaning of the house with soap, ashes and fuller's earth,
⁴
to embroider, to play the lute and harpsichord, to stroll between the parterres of the formal garden and in the shade of the yew rides – was it for this tame existence that Barbara Skelton had been endowed with this graceful body, smooth creamy skin, this wealth of bronzen curls, these sleepy beckoning eyes and mettlesome nostrils?

Expectation had died hard. Like someone in a maze, she had been constantly on the alert to find the hoped-for outlet. Each fresh day might bring the thrilling sensation, the vivid
emotion which her youth and temperament demanded. And like someone in a maze, she had been continually baffled, trapped in a narrow, shut-in place, tantalised by the laughter and singing of the libertine world without.

It was not that she lacked company. Maryiot Cells was always full of people. Every relation of the family, however distant or unwanted, had the right to claim its hospitality, and could descend uninvited with a retinue of children, chaplains, maids, servants, horses and coaches. Or worse still, poor relations would arrive, dingy widows who hoped that Barbara would find husbands for their plain daughters, ne'er-do-weels in hiding from their creditors, or old dodderers like Cousin Jonathan, who had had an apoplectic fit while on a two days' visit to Maryiot Cells four years ago, and had remained there ever since, grumbling and drinking Sir Ralph's sack and port.

Moreover Sir Ralph prided himself on keeping open house, and the neighbouring families were frequently entertained at Maryiot Cells, as well as any visitors of distinction who were passing that way. But Barbara had not found a friend among the women or a lover among the men. Friendship she did not desire. It seemed to her at once too tepid and too exacting a relationship to repay attention. But she would have welcomed the distraction of a lover.

The atmosphere of Maryiot Cells, however, was not conducive to amorous intrigue. Clerics and elderly folk never wearied of deploring the vicious frivolity of Court and society. Life at Maryiot Cells was as seemly and decorous as though His Merry Majesty had never been restored. Prying relations and servants were in every corner and
cranny. It would take a venturesome and ingenious gallant to cuckold Sir Ralph, and no such gallant had come young Lady Skelton's way.

She had entertained vivid hopes that her existence might be enlivened by visits to London. But she had only been three times to the capital since her marriage. Her first visit had been agreeable enough. Sir Ralph had taken his young bride to town in a new chariot; he had bought her some pretty jewels and several pieces of walnut furniture; taken her to Court and to the playhouse, the New Gardens at Vauxhall, the New Exchange and other fashionable resorts.
⁵
It was all fresh to the country-bred Barbara. She was content to see the sights and fashions, enjoy the bustle of the town, and bask in the admiring looks evoked by her immature but already provocative charms.

After this, ill-luck had dogged her London expeditions. The second one had been a family affair, with the Dowager and Paulina of the party, and the family coach laden with portmanteaux, pet dogs and provisions. Once in London, Paulina had promptly fallen sick of the smallpox, so that no one had ventured near the Skelton house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, nor had the family been invited to visit their friends. Paulina had been (most unfairly in Barbara's opinion) the centre of attention, as if there was some merit in being a nuisance and spoiling everyone else's enjoyment, thought Barbara moodily, as she sat embroidering in the parlour or helped to mix some apothecary's concoction for the invalid. All had been anxiety and solicitude. Old Lady Skelton lamented that her daughter had not been taken ill in the country, where they
could have laid a sheep in her bed, as had been done when she had measles, it being well known that this animal was so prone to infection that it drew the venom from a sick person to itself. Everyone exclaimed on the singular mercy of Heaven in bringing the young girl safely through the illness, and with an unblemished complexion. Barbara, brooding over her lost opportunities and pleasures, cared little for Paulina's complexion.

Her last visit to London had been cut short by Sir Ralph himself who, hearing that his friend the Clarenceux King of Arms
⁶
was passing through Buckinghamshire to attend the funeral of one of the local nobility, had insisted on returning to Maryiot Cells to entertain the distinguished traveller. Since then he had obstinately resisted his wife's pleas for a season in London. The harvest – the sheep shearing – the Quarter Sessions – there had always been something to claim his attention. He could not conceive why his wife should wish to leave the clean wholesome air of Maryiot Cells for that ugly noisy London.

He could not conceive, in fact had no inkling, of the brooding resentment, rising at times to a kind of sullen fury, that was taking possession of Barbara's soul. Other women might have sulked, stormed or nagged, but this was not Barbara Skelton's way. She was of a deeply secretive nature, delighting in concealment. To outward seeming she remained smooth-mannered, gracious, docile. Inside herself she led an intense impatient life, all her thoughts concentrated on her own personality, and always watchful to seize the opportunity for self-expression that must surely come to her before long.

But meanwhile some form of outlet was essential to her, and she found this for a time in the fashionable pursuit of gaming. Even the staid Sir Ralph could not discourage his guests from playing cards – young and old they were crazy about it – and whenever young Lady Skelton had the opportunity she played deep. She had very fair luck as a gamester, being both bold and wary, and by her success escaped the reproofs which her cautious husband would certainly have administered to her had she fallen into debt. The money she won meant little to her – as her late father's only surviving child and heir she was well-endowed, and Sir Ralph was not ungenerous – but the sense of power that she experienced as, sweetly smiling, she stretched out her hand for her gains, observing her opponent's mortified or downcast face, gave her a curious satisfaction.

It is doubtful if this partial outlet would have satisfied her indefinitely, appealing as it did only to her brain and not to her starved emotions (while, for that matter, her country environment gave her neither unlimited opportunities for indulging in it, nor the background of febrile excitement which is the gamester's natural element). But before the enjoyment of gaming had begun to pall, another prospect, far more alluring and uncommon, had very strangely opened before her.

It had come about through her card-playing and through her intense dislike of her sister-in-law, Henrietta Kingsclere. This had been the soil from which her project had sprung, but the idea had been her own, bursting like a fantastic and poisonous plant from the seed of her frustration.

It happened like this: