3 Great Historical Novels (93 page)

‘Have it your own way,’ said Tessa, ‘probably just as well,’ and she walked off without so much as a by-your-leave, head held high, footsteps echoing firmly and bleakly down the long high galleries, and then down the central staircase, pausing for a second again at the Whistler portrait, and then out of view. The maid followed meekly. She seemed defeated. He hoped for their sakes the rain had stopped.

‘She is a nice girl, much more amiable than Rosina, and I don't mind the mother so very much,' said Isobel. ‘I think dear Arthur is quite taken with little Minnie, and she with him. He came back from Rotten Row quite pink and glowing, not in the least sullen. It might almost become a love match.' She and Robert were sipping sherry. They had taken themselves early to bed, though feeling well enough. For once there was no lady's maid to observe them, which they saw as freedom, and no rags in her Ladyship's hair to make her sleeping uncomfortable, Grace having been temporarily exiled to Brown's to ‘do' for Mrs O'Brien and her girl. Grace had made it clear that she had taken offence, as she did often enough, though seldom letting the exact cause of her displeasure be known. The lower classes were woefully prone to taking offence, as those with the obligations that went with a privileged background were not. Perhaps Rosina would raise the matter at one of her Socialist meetings, thinking she was doing society a favour. ‘Sulking staff as a weapon of class oppression.'

‘She's a lively shopper and keeps us all laughing with her quaint ways,' continued Isobel, of Mrs O'Brien. ‘She is certainly no lady, but why should one expect someone from Chicago who lets one know she started in “burlesque” know
how to behave? What exactly does “burlesque” involve, Robert? She spoke of it with a certain pride.'

Robert explained that it was a kind of vulgar theatre, when girls kicked their legs in the air, sang rather raucous songs, and married the best they could and Isobel observed that for a Dilberne wife to have such a mother was probably worse than to have a father who started life as coal miner, as hers had been.

‘Very much worse,' said Robert. ‘Trade has quite lost its stigma.' And he remarked that to have a cowboy in the bloodline at least gave Minnie O'Brien a certain transatlantic glamour.

‘Grace tells me Mr O'Brien was no cowboy, but started out slaving in a Chicago slaughter house, up to his elbows in blood and bone,' said Isobel. According to Grace's perception, she said, the land of the free and home of the brave was a myth, the continent was peopled by tinkers from the bogs fleeing from famine, prepared to blow you up with dynamite as soon as look at you. Grace for one was very much against an American wife at Dilberne Court, according to her principles.

‘We must bear in mind,' said Isobel, ‘how important it is that servants respect their betters who employ them, if the anarchists are not to sweep away all order and its supporting tradition. It is our responsibility. Remember what happened at Greenwich.'

‘The bomb was intended for France,' said Robert, uneasily. But no one could be sure of that. In 1894, an anarchist had blown himself up at the Greenwich Observatory for reasons no one could quite fathom, other than that he was part of an anarchist cell in London, and terrorist attacks in France and Russia had become almost common occurrences. That such a thing should happen in pacific London was almost beyond
belief. France was another matter. The Paris Commune was less than thirty years ago.

‘The girl looks fine textured enough,' said Robert. ‘The triumph of nurture over nature, I suppose. Good nutrition and a few elocution lessons can make all the difference.'

‘That is certainly one's hope,' said Isobel. ‘Just add some good Christian values and even Africa will soon catch up.'

Robert frowned. It was the kind of casual remark she made from time to time which he wished she wouldn't, and so did many of her friends, taking their lead from the Marlborough set, where power and Society sat round the same table, and affected a kind of callous frivolity. Women were at their best and most charming if they reserved their comments for what they knew about.

Now, knowing that differing from Robert in her opinions often led to trouble, Isobel feared she had gone too far. Financial difficulties preyed on his mind and made him prone to outbursts of anger. To give voice to a political opinion which diverged from your husband's was hardly conducive to domestic tranquility, especially when they involved sexual matters. She quickly brought the subject back to the family.

‘I really think we have the beginnings of a love match between Arthur and Minnie,' Isobel said. ‘He says he wants to take her down to Dilberne Court and show her the estate. And I thought he only cared for machinery.'

‘It doesn't sound like the Arthur I know,' said his Lordship. ‘Perhaps he is trying to make Flora jealous.'

‘Flora?' said Isobel, sitting upright in the bed as if to be better prepared for something worse to come. Robert always had someone or something up his sleeve. ‘So I am right?'

‘Oh, Arthur most certainly has a Flora. He is a young man and the sap rises. This particular Flora has aspirations to
being a courtesan, but I fear she is little better than a common trollop. Though she dresses very agreeably. She was the one at Pagani's the other night with a contemporary of Arthur's. It quite put the poor boy out. He was hardly paying attention.'

‘I was not aware that anything was wrong,' said Isobel.

‘A boy has to do something while he waits for marriage.'

‘Whatever it is, it can't go on after the marriage,' said Isobel. ‘I won't have that. I hope Arthur realizes that. You must speak to him.'

Robert felt fortified by this sudden and definite response from Isobel. What sane man wants his wife to be too much of a free thinker? Having Rosina in his household was penance enough. If his wife and his daughter did not get on too smoothly together, it sometimes troubled him that it might be because they were too alike. But really the generations were very different. Girls these days aspired to be little intellectuals: Isobel's generation, especially in the North where the population was more dyed in the wool, still assumed that too much thinking was actually harmful for the female mind. Mental exhaustion could lead to brain fever. Bluestockings were pitied: they would never be content with their female lot in life. Isobel had been moulded to devote her intelligence to running a household, choosing clothes and selecting menus. Errant thoughts might break through, but at least she did not go to meetings and try to change the world, as Rosina did.

‘So like what Her Majesty is forever saying to the Prince,' Robert remarked. ‘To his eternal irritation. “It can't go on after marriage”. I haven't noticed His Royal Highness taking much notice, and poor Alexandra simply looks the other way or makes friends with her rivals. Where the Queen herself fails, can we poor Dilbernes do better? Let us just get the boy
married, so we may get on with the important things in life, and worry about the Floras of this world later.'

He took the glass from his wife's hand, and ruffled her hair a little.

‘It is rather pleasant when Grace is not about, don't you think?' he asked. ‘It makes a change to be unobserved. Sometimes I envy our tenants the sheer privacy of their lives.'

‘I certainly don't,' said Isobel. ‘If I try to do my own hair my arms start to ache at once. But you have changed the subject very effectively. I suppose we must let Arthur get on with his life in his own way, Floras and all.'

‘And I so seldom see you with your hair down. It is most attractive. Shall I eschew my dressing room for the night?'

‘Yes,' said his wife, agreeably. So far as she was concerned sharing the marital bed was the point of the marriage. She had married for love, and the satisfaction of desire, and though she could see money had been a factor for him, and that love and desire had come later, at least it had quickly followed. Isobel felt the familiar surge of rosy pleasure through her limbs, and felt grateful to her Maker.

‘One thing,' said Robert, ‘about Mrs Baum.'

‘Mrs Baum? Oh.' Isobel could see things were not going to be as simple as she had hoped. Something was to be required of her. ‘I was going to invite her, was I not, at your request? I didn't exactly forget, Robert, but one rather resists this sort of thing. Since Melinda and Arthur are getting on so well, the reason to appease Mr and Mrs Baum seems to have rather gone. It is never such a good idea to mix business with one's social life, you know, if it is not absolutely required.'

‘The urgency is still there, my dear,' said her husband. ‘I would have informed you if it were not. Indeed, it is rather more necessary than before. The idea now is not so much
escaping penury as acquiring wealth. It is an excellent aim. Our children may then make a free choice in their marriages. If Arthur decides Minnie O'Brien is not for him, we need not despair. If Rosina prefers never to marry, she need not.'

‘The price of this is asking Mrs Baum to a Charity Tea? Very well, if you insist. I dare say she is a perfectly pleasant woman. She is welcome to sip my sherry and donate to a good cause.'

‘No. More than that, my dear. She and Mr Baum must be invited to a dinner at which the Prince is present.'

The rosy warmth drained rather from Lady Isobel's limbs. She even shivered a little.

‘Oh dear,' she said. ‘Just to think of the royal dinner is exhausting. The O'Briens are bad enough. But the Baums? Why? They will hardly be socially at ease. I feel for them, as much as for my guests. The Jews don't eat shellfish. I will not be able to serve lobster, which is such a favourite with so many, or scalloped oysters, which is usually done at this time of year. And I believe pork too. So even roast suckling pig, which is the Prince's favourite, is out of the question.'

‘The Prince dines frequently with the Rothschilds, and I have never heard him complain about the menu,' said her husband. ‘More, Ernest Cassel is his good friend, and decorated by her Majesty—'

‘You mean Cassel lends the Prince money, which he then gambles away, and the Prince has worn down the poor Queen, so this vulgar financier, who may be very clever but comes from nowhere, and has no loyalty whatsoever to this country, from some wandering tribe, receives a KCMG from her in return? You are in unholy waters, my dear. You're too simple. Mr Kruger of the Boers, according to
The Times
, would have it that the Rothschilds were behind the Jamestown Raid, from
whence our own personal losses at Ladysmith originated. They care nothing for patriotism, only for personal gain. Whatever you are doing, be careful.'

‘It is bad for a lady's looks to read the newspapers so closely,' said Robert. He had not expected quite so much opposition to a simple request.

‘Besides,' said her Ladyship, rather feebly, so he knew he was winning the argument, and her arguments more to do with the dinner menu than any serious principle, ‘I have seldom seen Cassel at Princess Alexandra's table.'

‘Because poor Alexandra is deaf,' said Robert, ‘and became so within three years of the marriage, to the Prince's very great distress.'

‘Ernest Cassel is a Catholic,' said his wife. ‘Don't they owe more loyalty to the Pope in Rome than to their own country? And one tries not to have Catholics to dinner on a Friday, because of the lack of a meat course. All one can do for them is serve stewed pigeons, which unaccountably are treated as fish, but are never Cook's forte. Freddie's cook manages pigeon well enough, but her beef is never right. I am sure dear Freddie is trying to poach her. Well, well, then I will do what I can. We will ask them for the seventeenth, and the Prince will have to put up with both the Baums and the O'Briens. I really hope Rosina consents to be present and doesn't find a meeting she has to go to. The Prince likes Rosina.'

She had capitulated. Isobel too, Robert had no doubt, could see the benefit in any plan which would increase the family's future prosperity. She was her father's daughter. He moved his hand round her back beneath the silk wrap and felt her body move into his.

When Minnie returned to the hotel from her horse riding jaunt with Arthur she found Grace bathing her mother’s feet in a most elegant blue and white footbath.

‘Epsom salts,’ said her mother. ‘What they use over here for feet. My, what a day we had. Poor Grace got quite soaked. We went shopping down Bond Street.’

‘Did you get a present for Father?’ asked Minnie. ‘He’ll be missing us.’

‘He’ll be making do on his own, I don’t doubt,’ said Tessa. ‘I wouldn’t worry about him. I nearly bought him a nice pocket watch but he’ll never give up his old railroad watch. How was your day?’

‘I had a good gallop,’ said Minnie, ‘and Arthur forgave me for it, though he still thinks it is unladylike.’

‘You are very bad, Minnie. You only do it to annoy. I thought you quite liked this young man.’

‘Oh I do,’ said Minnie, ‘I do declare I am almost in love with him. I took good care not to make jokes or say anything sensible. That must mean something.’

‘While your mother’s feet soak, Miss Minnie,’ said Grace, ‘may I run you a bath?’

Her tone had quite changed. It was friendly, even concerned. Minnie wondered why.

‘Grace has forgiven us,’ her mother said, unasked. ‘She now sees you’re natural born gentry, even if I’m not, and a fit wife for the Earl of Dilberne, so she’s prepared to be nice to us.’

Grace gasped and scarcely knew where to look.

‘Isn’t that a fact, Grace?’ persisted Tessa. ‘See, I can read your mind.’

‘I am no different this evening than I was this morning,’ observed Minnie, ‘whatever happened during your day.’

‘But she is, isn’t she?’ said her mother to Grace, and then, turning to Minnie, said, ‘We visited the Royal Academy of Arts and saw a portrait of your real father, Mr Eyre Crowe. Holy Mary Mother of God, Minnie, you’re the spitting image of him, same eyes, same nose, I’d put my life on it. Isn’t that a fact, Grace? You saw it for yourself.’

‘Oh please, Mrs O’Brien,’ said Grace, in a voice more
high-pitched
than usual. ‘I saw nothing of the kind, Miss Minnie. Believe me. Just a blotchy portrait of a bearded man. I don’t know nothing about art. I’m just the lady’s maid. Mrs O’Brien, I’d be obliged if you’d just let Miss Minnie get out of these dirty clothes and on with her bath. We want her to look nice for dinner tonight. It is only an hotel dinner but even so.’

Minnie went quietly with Grace into the bathroom and took her bath. Grace helped Minnie out of her riding clothes. Minnie, accustomed to black servants, was disconcerted to find herself standing nude in front of a white woman, but thought she had better get used to it, though in truth her early experiences in a convent had marked her more than she would acknowledge. She felt a little stunned and dizzy, as if her mother had hurled a baseball at her head and she hadn’t got out of the way in time. What had Tessa just said? Her ‘real father’?

Tessa had made hints through Minnie’s childhood, especially when Billy failed to use a spittoon or sneezed into
his soup, and annoyed her, that Minnie was not her father’s child and thanked the Lord for it, but since Billy had always laughed it off, and given Tessa a cuddle, and told his wife to cut out giving herself airs, Minnie had assumed the claim to be just another of Tessa’s passing follies. She knew the name Eyre Crowe. She had seen his painting in the Institute of Arts back home often enough. His name was engraved on the little brass plate beneath a painting of a group of clean and healthy girls waiting on a bench for the slave auction. All that slavery was over now, though freedom hadn’t seemed to do the Negroes much good. She couldn’t see that the squalor, filth and cold of the cattle yards was much of an improvement on the cotton fields. It didn’t bear thinking about too much, any more than that she wasn’t her father’s daughter, which, frankly, if true, and she would not be surprised if it were, was rather a relief.

Billy was a good-hearted, jovial, generous, noisy, tolerant man, who did good in the community, ate enormously, broke wind frequently, was kind to cattle while they waited for slaughter, and never flaunted any mistresses in front of his wife. Billy and Tessa were two of a kind and, however fond she was of them, not her kind. No, she could accept her illegitimacy, or whatever it was, well enough. She’d just had to readjust her vision of herself rather quickly: Miss Melinda O’Brien – affianced, if secretly, to Arthur, Earl-in-waiting of Dilberne. Billy was, she could see, not the best father-in-law for Arthur, but probably preferable to have in his life than a mother-inlaw who had borne his wife outside the marriage bed. She must persuade her mother to stay quiet about Eyre Crowe, simply forget him, as she herself would. Was he still alive? It was possible, although one always assumed those who had paintings in gold frames in State museums were of the past. If
so, it might complicate matters. She could live very well as Viscountess Hedleigh, the O’Brien girl. But Viscountess Hedleigh the Eyre Crowe girl? She did not want to lose Arthur. She was reeling him in as a fisherman does a salmon. He was tugging away at the line at the moment; the last thing she wanted was to have it snagged and snapped on unexpected rocks before she could pull him in. Arthur must get no hint of this development. Her mother must simply forget she had ever set eyes on a portrait of Eyre Crowe. So must Grace. Then everything would be as it had been. She stepped out of the bath clean, warm, rosy and composed.

Fortunately Grace had come to the same conclusion. ‘I brought out the brown creased-silk with the low neck for Miss Minnie,’ said Grace to Tessa, tenderly drying her new mistress’s feet. The swelling had gone down; the gold kid shoes would fit by the time she was ready for dinner. The shoes had cost as much as she, Grace, earned in a year. There must be some other way of living in which the harder you worked, the more money you earned.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need
. It was a fine sentiment, but more a statement of hope than a declaration of intent. ‘Miss Minnie can wear it with the pearls. Very simple and nice, suitable for a young girl.’

‘Snakes alive, Grace,’ said Tessa O’Brien, ‘are you trying to turn my girl into a frump? That dress does nothing for her at all.’

‘It’s discreet and ladylike, Mrs O’Brien, and that’s what we want for her at the moment. May I offer you a word of advice?’

‘Advise away, Grace,’ said Tessa. ‘There’s no stopping you anyway.’

‘Silence is the best policy,’ said Grace. ‘Truth is too
dangerous. Miss Minnie is as pure as the driven snow, born in wedlock, and legal heir to your husband’s fortune.’

‘You’re a good woman, Grace,’ said Tessa. ‘But what a world of lies this is!’

‘It’s how we all survive,’ observed Grace.