The Petticoat Men (12 page)

‘Elijah Fortune!’ said his mother when Billy had described him soon after he had started work, aged thirteen. ‘Well.’ And for a moment she said nothing more. ‘He didn’t mention we were known to each other?’ Billy shook his head. She nodded. ‘How like Elijah,’ was all she said then. And then she did not mention Elijah Fortune for years.

But very much later, long after they had moved to 13 Wakefield-street, Mrs Stacey said: ‘Well. We’re friends from the past – Elijah used to be at the stage door at Drury Lane in the olden, golden days – Elijah and your Pa and me and his wife Dodo who was a dancer and a singer in the music halls, and loved everything that was coloured red! Elijah was very fond of your Pa, your Pa missed him when he went to the Parliament, it’s a long time since I’ve seen him. A good man down to his shoes. He knows everything about everybody in London, and he’s a discreet man, thoughtful as to how he uses his information.’

Billy and Mattie rolled their eyes. (Not so their mother could see, of course.) Elijah Fortune might know everything about everybody in London. It had been their opinion from a very young age that the same could be said about their mother.

After Billy had seen the Prime Minister with street-girls, he said to his mother: ‘Elijah says Mr Gladstone’s been rescuing street-girls for years.’

Mrs Stacey laughed. ‘Peg Turnball runs one of the houses off the Strand and Peg said to me a few years ago: “Listen, Isabella, that man, Mr Gladstone, he’s a bloody great nuisance and I wish he’d keep out of my street – my girls complain – Edie Barnes moans that he reads her blooming Shakespeare! Well, I don’t care about that in their own time, Isabella, but he puts people off approaching the girls, the way he hangs about them so, he’s blooming bad for business!”’

And then his mother asked Billy, in that droll manner her children were used to: ‘Did Elijah mention Peg’s other observation: that Mr Gladstone helps only pretty girls, and young, not ugly old ones?’ and Billy had laughed too, because that indeed had been his observation also.

‘Where does he walk?’ asked Mattie curiously. ‘The Prime Minister of England walking in the Haymarket? He
wouldn’t
!’

‘Not the Haymarket, Mattie, he’s not stupid!’ said Billy. ‘After the Parliament business is over at night he goes up Whitehall – right past Downing Street as if he didn’t have any connection to it, and then from Whitehall he often doesn’t turn towards Carlton House Terrace where he lives still, but down the Strand instead.’

‘Ten Downing Street is quite small for a family,’ said their mother knowledgeably, which made her children roll their eyes at each other briefly, for it meant that, sometime, through one of her multitudinous acquaintances, Mrs Stacey had probably been inside.

‘And how do you know he goes down the Strand?’ said Mattie, laughing at her brother. ‘You walking the streets too?’

‘Mind your own business,’ said Billy mildly.

He didn’t say he had once or twice followed Mr Gladstone, so fascinated was he by this strange and powerful man who had helped Billy get promoted, probably without realising it. And finally Mattie had seen the famous man herself. She had met Billy outside the Parliament, and Mr Gladstone had passed them in the street, and courteously raised his hat.

‘Say hello to Elijah from me,’ his mother said at last. ‘And to give my love to Dodo. Tell him—’ She stopped, bit her lip. ‘Tell him it all worked out in the end.’

And Billy had looked at his mother carefully, and nodded.

Now Billy sat at the clerks’ desks, having been banished from the Prime Minister’s office, writing neatly. But his thoughts went round and round.
What is the connection between Mr Gladstone and Lord Arthur Clinton?
The scene he had observed tumbled about in his curious mind. Billy had seen Lord Arthur, the Member for Newark, in the Houses of Parliament occasionally (but not often), and at the little theatre in Clapham with his pretty sister, and a few times in Wakefield-street with Ernest. Billy’s father had taught him long ago not to judge what he did not know, and Billy lived by this precept, but he had quietly thought Lord Arthur a dispiriting fellow.

‘He’s had a dispiriting life,’ Elijah had said.

But this dispiriting person was no longer a Member of Parliament. He had lost, or resigned, his seat at the last election. He’d been made a bankrupt, Freddie had told them, and they had never seen him at Wakefield-street again. But whatever his proclivities, of what real consequence could he be to the government now, that Mr Gladstone had turned so pale? Something knocked at Billy’s brain, some piece of information.

Lord Arthur Clinton.

Newark.

Billy, such an avid reader on the Parliament, knew something. Newark had been known as one of the ‘pocket boroughs’ – in the pocket of the local lord, to give to whomever he pleased.

Billy suddenly jumped up from the long clerks’ desk, knocking over some ink and receiving complaints and swear-words from other clerks as they worked. He put papers under his arm, to look official; he knew where records were kept, and scrolls of past election results. Mr Gladstone was now the Member for Greenwich. And before that, Billy now read, for South Lancashire. And before that for Oxford University. (
Bit odd
, thought Billy,
a university having a vote
.)

He kept going back and back patiently, following Mr Gladstone’s successes (and sometimes his failures; sometimes he had stood for two seats at once, to be sure of getting one somewhere). Back and back the records went; the light was going from outside; Billy did not notice, he had a task, he simply bent nearer to the old pages.

Billy Stacey had been old enough to understand what had happened to his family when his beloved father died. He knew what had happened to his mother. He knew what she had had to do, to make them safe. And today he had understood what his mother and his sister did not: that their safety could now be affected by what had happened to Ernest and Freddie.

And then he saw it, in the shadowing evening light.

He must have known it, read it somewhere, or his mind would not have niggled in that way. Billy Stacey found that from 1832, when he was first elected to Parliament, till 1845, Mr Gladstone had been the Member of Parliament for the pocket borough of Newark.

The same seat that Lord Arthur Clinton had briefly held.

Billy felt slightly dizzy. Was that the connection?
Who gave Mr Gladstone his very first parliamentary seat? Whose pocket was it in? The same seat that Arthur Clinton had held. Who gave it to Arthur Clinton?
But Arthur Clinton had lost the seat, or stood down.

Billy sneezed in the dust. Did this dry old stuff have anything to do with Ernest and Freddie dressing in their ladies’ gowns? It didn’t seem very likely.

But Billy had seen Mr Gladstone’s face go white, and Billy Stacey never let things go.

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The bishop who had visited the Prime Minister in his office had also made it his business to then call at the Gladstone family house in Carlton House Terrace, to speak to the Prime Minister’s wife.

Which is why, as Billy Stacey bent over old documents in the falling light, the aristocratic and confident Mrs Catherine Gladstone (above her husband in birth, with the advantages that brings which can sometimes be useful in a crisis) was seen to enter a carriage which quickly deposited her, after a very short journey, at the doors of Marlborough House at the end of Pall Mall, where the rotund Prince of Wales and the beautiful Princess Alexandra were waiting out their long years, for their destiny. And where this evening a soirée
was being held to which Mr and Mrs Gladstone had been invited. She never minded going to such things on her own for everybody knew Mrs Gladstone, and her husband would join her later if he was able. And she was interested this evening in who else might, or might not, be present also.

The soirées held regularly at Marlborough House by the Prince and Princess of Wales were not, of course, similar to the memorable soirée
held at Porterbury’s Hotel by the Strand, although there were straight-backed gilt chairs for the ladies, and plates of fruit, and laughter and chandeliers. But in Marlborough House there were beautiful old paintings on the walls and two magnificent staircases leading down to the main reception room. There were also over a hundred rooms and very many servants and two grand pianos in one corner from whence Haydn’s ‘Variations’ wafted. Royal portraits stared down regally. A fruit cup was served by respectably uniformed staff.

There were other members of royalty present (Queen Victoria, never); there were ladies of society and best lineage; and most of all there were the racy, rich members of the ‘Marlborough House set’ as it was known. (It helped to be rich, to enter this magic circle: the Prince of Wales required a great deal of entertaining, which often turned out to be surprisingly expensive.) The Prince was a genial and genuinely welcoming host; the beautiful Princess of Wales, hurt by one matter or another (for they came with growing frequency), nevertheless stood graciously with her lovely head held high. Also present was the person whom Mrs Gladstone had hoped to see: Lady Susan Vane-Tempest, daughter of their old, now-deceased friend: Henry, the fifth Duke of Newcastle.

‘Susan, my dear!’

Mrs Gladstone drew the attractive woman aside and as she did so she saw that Susan’s eyes were anxious as she watched their host over the heads of the guests. But nothing after all was more natural than that they should know each other well; Susan and the Prince of Wales had been friends since childhood. (Mrs Gladstone had of course heard the rumours of a slightly different relationship.)

Susan did give now her whole attention to the older woman and smiled at her with genuine affection.

‘My dear Mrs Gladstone, how lovely to see you!’ and she kissed her warmly. ‘I think of you often. How is the Prime Minister?’

‘Sitting in the House, alas, unable to attend. He too would have been glad to see you, dear Susan, as am I.’

There was a burst of male laughter from across the large room and people smiled at the sound and drank fruit cup.

‘You look lovely, as you always do, my dear. And how are you? It is some time since we have seen you.’

‘I am – very well,’ said the lovely Lady Susan, but again her eyes seemed anxious as she involuntarily looked once more for the Prince of Wales.

‘I am glad. And your brothers? We were just wondering, Mr Gladstone and I, if you knew the whereabouts of Arthur?’

‘Arthur?’

And Lady Susan pulled herself together at once. To Mrs Gladstone, Susan’s voice seemed nonchalant; she shrugged her noble shoulders. Perhaps had not yet heard; perhaps had more important things on her mind. Then Susan laughed. ‘My brother Arthur is never to be found – unless he requires financial assistance of course. You know that perfectly well, Mrs Gladstone!’ she ended gaily.

‘I believe he may be in some sort of – difficulty.’

Lady Susan looked at the older woman. Of all the people in the world to whom she might have confided, Mrs Gladstone was the one of whom she was most fond. Mrs Gladstone had been so good and loving when her own beautiful mother had run away. Susan had a sudden, desolate longing for Catherine Gladstone to put her arms around her and stroke her hair and comfort her, tell her all would be well in the end, as she had done so often long ago. But Mrs Gladstone would not understand that, although Susan loved her brother, it was also the way Arthur’s actions were affecting her
own
life that troubled her at the moment.

She disguised a tiny sigh with a cough, and shrugged again. ‘Is not Arty always in difficulty!’ she said ruefully
.
‘Is that not a way of life with Arty?’

The conversation might have proceeded further but they were suddenly surrounded by gentlemen; the Prince of Wales himself approached. First he smiled at Lady Susan, who curtseyed at once. Then he turned his whole attention to the older woman.

‘My dear Mrs Gladstone. I suppose the Great Man is unavailable – we hope he will arrive later as he sometimes manages so to do. But in our opinion no soirée
of ours is complete without your presence. My wife wishes to speak with you, and I myself wish you to partake of some special wine from Madeira that I have acquired.’

Mrs Gladstone was drawn away by His Royal Highness but not before she observed an exchange of, frankly, intimate looks between himself and Lady Susan, who was then swept off by some of the Marlborough House set, laughter echoing.

Mozart had succeeded Haydn. ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’
emanated now from the two grand pianos.

When Mrs Gladstone tried again later to find the younger woman, she was advised that Lady Susan Vane-Tempest had had to leave early.

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