Rake's Progress (14 page)

‘Of what is the use, Miss Fipps,' she said, ‘of paying a vast price for a box at the opera and wearing grand clothes if no one is going to see the clothes and the box is not going to be used?'

‘We can go tomorrow night,' pointed out the infuriating Miss Fipps.

‘No, I feel I must go,' said Esther. ‘I should at least appear in public with my supposed fiancé after that scandal.'

‘As you wish,' said Miss Fipps. ‘My own gown has seen better days, so it does not matter if it is ruined.'

‘As to that,' said Esther, looking at Miss Fipps' depressing round gown of purple silk, ‘I think you should feel free to order what you want from my dressmaker.'

‘You already pay me a very good salary,' said Miss Fipps comfortably. ‘Such excitement. I have never been
paid
before.'

‘How did you exist?' asked Esther, realizing again she knew very little about her companion.

‘I have quite a number of rich relatives,' said Miss Fipps. ‘I am normally passed from one to the other.'

‘How depressing! Which relative did you come to London to stay with?'

But, as sometimes happened, Miss Fipps appeared to become unaccountably deaf.

‘If we are going,' she said, ‘we may as well have the carriage brought around. That is, if you do not mind being unfashionable and want to see the whole performance.'

‘Why is it unfashionable? What other reason is there for going to the opera?'

‘To see and be seen. To go to the ball and supper afterwards. To make suitable connections for the coming Season.'

‘I wish to be unfashionable, Miss Fipps. If you do not mind, I would like to go now.'

Miss Fipps nodded in a vague way and rang the bell to order the carriage.

She was an odd woman
, reflected Esther. She appeared fat and vague and timid and kept much in the background, but she was somehow always there when needed, and had a practical way of checking dressmaker's bills and knowing which shops sold the best feathers and materials. She was also very good with the servants and had a quick
eye to notice when a housemaid had a toothache or whether a footman was worried about some personal matter. Hitherto, Esther had considered herself a good mistress, but she had never before thought of servants as being people to be particularly concerned about unless they actually voiced their complaints and worries. She considered she was doing her duty if they were well dressed and well fed and if everything to further their education and Bible studies had been attended to. That servants had loves and passions, griefs, and the toothache, just like their masters, was a new idea. She supposed Miss Fipps' life as a poor relation where one was, after all, a kind of servant, subject to the whims of the richer relative, had given her an added insight, and in this Esther was right. It was an age when people firmly believed that God put one in one's appointed station, and to sulk or be discontented in it was going against the will of God. In many ways, this belief protected the servants from envying their betters, and their betters from troubling themselves about what went on in their servants' minds.

But she had further reason to speculate about her companion's background as their carriage crawled inch by inch through the now suffocating fog in the direction of Covent Garden. London was lost, swimming in a thick sea of fog. Beyond the carriage window there was black nothingness.

‘Dear me,' said Miss Fipps, rubbing the glass of the carriage window with an edge of her stole, ‘I wonder if Carlton will venture out in such weather.'

‘Carlton?' said Esther sharply. ‘Do you mean Lord Guy?'

‘Yes, Miss Jones.'

‘Did you know him before?'

The carriage gave a lurch, and Esther was thrown forward. The trap in the roof was raised, and the coachman called down apologetically, ‘Hit the kerb, ma'am. Can't see a thing in this fog.'

‘Take your time,' called Esther.

The carriage lurched on. After a time, Esther realized Miss Fipps had not answered her question. ‘Miss Fipps,' she said.

The fog was inside the carriage now, and Miss Fipps' face was only a vague white blur under the dim light of the carriage lamp.

‘Miss Fipps!' called Esther again.

This time a gentle snore was the only reply.

Esther tucked away that use of Lord Guy's name – Carlton – in the back of her mind, and then her thoughts turned to her little brother and sister. She had not explained to them that the engagement was only for a week, but she had been taken aback by their joy in the news of her engagement. Lord Guy, from the moment he had appeared on the stage at Astley's, had been a hero to them. He was good fun, for had he not aided and abetted Esther in her theatrical performance? He was majestic. Had he not quelled a roomful of hooligans? The fact that Esther had saved the little white mare, whom the children now called Snowball, from further ill treatment appeared to have been forgotten. It was
Lord Guy who had brought Snowball home and had actually gone round to the mews and attended to the animal with his own hands. It was Lord Guy who had suggested Snowball would make an excellent mount for the children. Esther did not have the heart to tell them that their hero's morals were of the worst. She decided she must plan a special treat for them on the day she announced the end of her engagement.

Rainbird would know what to do, she thought. Rainbird had risen out of the anonymous mass of London servants to become a special personality in Esther's eyes. She longed to employ him as her own butler, but Graves was a good man and Esther could not bring herself to displace her butler in an age when servants' jobs were notoriously hard to find. Perhaps she could invent another title for Rainbird, Controller of the Household, or something like that, which would establish him in Berkeley Square and have him constantly on hand to advise her.

Other women might dream of a husband to take over the worries of making household decisions and the bringing up of two small children, but Esther did not intend to marry.

And yet the romances she had read had filled her with strange yearnings, even as she laughed at the ridiculous stories.

There was another jolt, and the carriage came to a halt.

‘We're here, ma'am,' called the coachman.

The footman opened the carriage door and let down the steps. Miss Fipps came awake and peered out into the fog.

‘It is very quiet, Miss Jones,' she said. ‘Perhaps the performance has been cancelled.'

But Esther could not believe such a thing could happen, not on her first night, not when she was wearing this splendid gown that . . . someone . . . must see.

‘Wait here a moment, Miss Fipps,' she said.

‘Much better to let the footman find out for you,' said Miss Fipps. ‘These terrible fogs can make you lose your way after you have only gone a few paces.'

But Esther had had enough of inactivity.

She stepped down into the fog.

‘Mama!' wailed a plaintive voice nearby. ‘Mama!'

‘Best get back in the carriage, ma'am,' came her footman's voice. ‘Looks like the theatre's closed.'

‘How can you
see
if the theatre's even there, let alone tell if it is closed?' said Esther testily. ‘Oh, wait here, John, until I find out what ails that child.'

John, the footman, wanted to protest but was too much in awe of his strong-willed mistress to say anything.

‘Mama!' came the child's voice again.

Esther hugged her cloak tightly about her and made her way towards the voice. She practically bumped into a small figure. Bending down, Esther tried to see the child, but between the darkness, for
night had fallen, and the thick, all-encompassing fog, she could only make out a dim little shape.

‘Where did you last see your mother?' she asked. ‘Do not cry. I shall find her.'

‘We came to the opera with Mama,' said the child. ‘We were not to stay for the performance. Our nursemaid was to take us home, that is me and my sister, Louise. I ran away a little from the carriage as a joke. I heard Mama calling that the theatre was closed and I was to come back. I went a little away, just for fun. I-I g-got l-lost.'

‘Don't cry again,' said Esther. ‘Here! Give me your hand.' She fumbled until she felt the child's hand and grasped it firmly.

‘Jane!' came a faint voice over to the left. And, immediately after, ‘Miss Jones,' called Miss Fipps' voice over on the right.

‘I shall return shortly, Miss Fipps,' called Esther, and to the child, ‘Is your name Jane?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then I think I hear your mother. Come along.' And, holding the child's hand, Esther walked off to the left.

‘Jane!' sounded the voice, much nearer and clearer. ‘She is safe with me,' called Esther. ‘Keep calling so that I can find you.'

The voice obediently kept calling, but Esther almost bumped into a carriage before she realized she had at last found the child's mother.

Although the carriage lamps were burning, they were only two yellow blurs, unable to pierce the
fog. Esther handed over the child she had never seen to a mother she could not see either, gracefully accepted effusive thanks, and backed off into the fog to find her own carriage. It was simply a matter of returning the way she had come.

After she had been walking for some time, tracing and retracing her steps, she found she was completely lost – lost in one of London's worst fogs, where sinister figures loomed up out of the thick black clouds and disappeared again like phantoms.

‘Miss Fipps!' she called, loudly and sharply.

‘Miss Fipps!' mocked a man's coarse voice.

Calling and calling, and tormented by ghostly voices mocking her and echoing her, Esther blundered on through the fog, feeling more and more frightened. She was wearing a particularly fine gold-and-emerald necklace, the first piece of expensive jewellery she had ever treated herself to. She was richly dressed.

She began talking to herself, calling herself to order, telling herself not to panic. A hand seized her cloak and with a little scream of terror, she beat it off. Then another hand grabbed out of the fog, and again she beat it off. She felt the hands were like flames, licking at her clothes, as she smacked and beat at them to escape their clutches.

At last, more frightened than she had ever been in her life before, Esther threw back her head and screamed, ‘Help! Help me. I am being attacked. Help!'

Silence.

Absolute silence surrounded her. Blackness. But the silence had a waiting quality, as if her unseen tormentors were holding their breath to see if there came any answering call from the watch.

And then, faint and far off, she heard an answering call: ‘Keep shouting. I am coming.'

Sending up a prayer that the voice should prove to belong to a rescuer and not some clever thief, Esther called, ‘Here. I am here. Over here.'

‘Keep calling,' shouted the voice, nearer now. ‘And don't move.'

‘Help. Help me! Here. Over here!' shouted Esther.

‘Got you, thank God' came a voice suddenly in her ear, and a strong pair of arms went about her.

‘
NO
!' screamed Esther, now afraid of rape. ‘Help!'

‘My dear Miss Jones, it is I, Carlton. You are safe.'

‘Carlton?' said Esther weakly. ‘Oh, Lord Guy, is it indeed you?'

‘It is indeed I.' He held her in a comforting way, and Esther, feeling as weak and helpless as a child, put her head on his shoulder and began to cry.

‘You poor little angel,' he said caressingly, and the hitherto independent Miss Esther Jones, all five feet eleven inches of her, put her arms around him and hugged him back, feeling safe at last.

In town let me live then, in town let me die,
For in truth, I can't relish the country, not I,
If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,
O, give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall.

CHARLES MORRIS