The Forest (91 page)

She certainly gave Fanny a change of air. They went down to the Pump Room where, by the old Roman baths, one took the medicinal waters. In the big yard, with an old Gothic abbey church making a charming contrast, men in blue coats and gold buttons waited to convey people in sedan chairs. Mrs Grockleton insisted that she and Fanny use these upon the first occasion.

The next day they attended a concert at the Assembly Rooms. These were large and very handsome. They learned that there was to be a subscription ball two evenings later, which Mrs Grockleton insisted they must attend.

The next day was taken up chiefly with shopping – which was not to say that they bought anything, but they inspected the fashionable shops and observed all the people in them.

‘For Bath sets the tone, Fanny,’ Mrs Grockleton obligingly explained. ‘Bath is where polite society is born. Bath is’ – she was delighted by the sudden thought – ‘like our academy. Even the most charming young ladies, those of the highest birth who have lived all their lives in the country, can benefit from being exposed in Bath.’

The ball turned out to be a slight disappointment. If the fashionable world was at Bath, it had not descended on the Assembly Rooms that night. Instead, a large collection of the spa’s widows, invalids, half-pay officers and eager tradesmen danced the night away very cheerfully and with a certain decorous noise. They encountered the family of a Bristol merchant whose two sons asked Fanny to dance. So did a very pleasant army major, whose coat collar had taken on that slightly greasy look, which cloth has just before it starts to fray. ‘You need have no fear of me,’ he genially remarked to her. ‘I’m here to find a rich widow.’

The major, in fact, turned out to be an amusing man, who told her much that was useful about the town. ‘For people like yourself in the higher part, there are the upper rooms to go to in the evening. Better company up there. But the best sort, the gentry, don’t come to the Assembly Rooms often. Not unless there’s something worth seeing. They have private parties. That’s where you belong.’

In her different way, Mrs Grockleton had come to a similar conclusion. ‘I’m afraid’, she remarked to her husband when they were alone that night, ‘the Rooms were full of people like us.’

‘You don’t care to meet people like ourselves?’ her husband mildly enquired.

‘If we wanted to meet people like us,’ Mrs Grockleton very reasonably pointed out, ‘we could save our money and stay at home.’

The succeeding days went off well enough, though. When it was sufficiently warm, in the mornings, they took the children to see the sights, or to walk round by the river to view the splendid wooded slopes of Beechen Cliff. Another day they went out of the city to wonder the splendour of Prior Park, past which much of the stone for the building of the city had been brought on a specially constructed railway track which, being on a long incline, operated by the force of gravity. Mr Grockleton was much taken with this.

Mrs Grockleton was thorough. Soon Fanny felt she knew the city as well as most visitors: handsome Queen Square, the Circus, the elegant Pulteney Bridge designed by Adams, the Assembly Rooms, upper and lower, and the Royal Crescent, where one walked on a Sunday, to be seen. There was no defined social season at Bath, for with people going there all year round it was always a season of a kind. The place was very agreeable, on the whole, even if they didn’t know many people. At the end of the first week it rained, almost continually, for three days and Fanny might have felt a little depressed if she had not received a most loving letter from Louisa saying that she and her brother were planning to make a short visit to Bath themselves, to enjoy her company.

It was halfway through the second week when the strange little incident occurred. Having spent an hour or two playing rather listlessly with the Grockleton children in the house, Fanny had gone down to the centre of the town alone. There were shops in the arcaded streets selling every kind of luxury, but her attention had been especially taken by one window in which there was a fine display of Worcester china. The set, which was decorated with depictions of English landscapes in the classical style, had seemed so appropriate in this English Roman spa that she had decided to come back and peruse it at her leisure. And, for quite half an hour, the listlessness she had felt almost disappeared as she inspected one charming scene after another. At last, however, she emerged and started to walk up the hill.

She had only gone a little way and come to an intersection, when, a couple of hundred yards away down the street on her right, she saw Mr Martell. He was stepping out of a carriage. He turned, with his back to her, and handed down a very handsomely dressed young lady. A moment later they entered a large house together.

Mr Martell. Her heart missed a beat. With a lady. Why not with a lady? Was it Mr Martell, though? She hadn’t actually seen his face. A tallish, saturnine man, dark-haired. The carriage, drawn by four beautifully turned-out horses, certainly belonged to someone rich and aristocratic. The way he moved, the general look of him were so exceedingly like Mr Martell that she had assumed it must be he. But then, she reflected, Mr Martell had a double in an old picture; there could be other visitors to Bath who resembled him.

Was it Mr Martell? She felt her pulse quicken sharply. She wanted so much to know. She hesitated. What would she do if she encountered him? Would they speak? Would she speak? What could she say to Mr Martell and a handsome young lady? If he was staying in Bath, would they meet, or would he move across the upper horizon of the city, from one private house to another, hidden from her view?

Since he is living in a world quite beyond mine, where he has certainly no further desire for my company; since his heart is probably engaged by now; and since, besides, he is a Penruddock, with whom I cannot and do not wish to have anything to do, she thought, these speculations are quite useless. The only thing is to move on.

She didn’t. Looking around for an excuse, she found a view to admire and lingered there several minutes, in case he came out. After all, he might have been returning the lady to her house. But no one emerged. The carriage remained where it was. After a further pause she began to walk along the pavement towards it. She was only curious, she told herself, that was all.

Her heart was beating faster, though. What if he appeared now and bumped into her? She would be polite but cool to him. She would certainly rebuff him. If there were any lingering doubts in his mind about her attitude towards him she would be able to settle them. Fortified with this intention, she walked casually in the direction of the big wheels of the carriage.

The door of the house was closed. The coachman was sitting calmly but very smartly in position. He was wearing an elegant chocolate-brown coat and cape. She looked up at him and smiled. ‘You have a very handsome carriage,’ she said pleasantly. He touched his hat and thanked her kindly. ‘And who does it belong to?’

‘To Mr Markham, My Lady,’ he replied politely.

‘Markham, did you say, or Martell?’

‘Markham, My Lady. I don’t know any Mr Martell. Mr Markham just stepped into the house.’

‘Oh. I see.’ She forced another smile, then walked on. Had she made herself look foolish? She didn’t think so. Was she relieved? She thought she must be. So why was it, then, as she turned the next corner, that the energy she had experienced in the last few minutes seemed to drain from her? Her feet suddenly felt heavy. Scarcely knowing it was doing so, her head hung forward and her shoulders seemed to wilt. Ahead of her, up the steep stone hill, the sky inadvertently grew a duller grey.

When she got back she went up to sit with a book by the window of the drawing room and when Mrs Grockleton suggested a drive she excused herself, saying she had a headache. And there she sat for some hours, doing nothing, wishing for nothing. That night she slept badly.

Fanny’s curiosity as to the whereabouts of Mr Martell was to be satisfied early the following week by a letter from Louisa.

It informed her that as Mr Martell was expected at the Burrards’ in a few days, she and Edward had decided not to come to see her in Bath.

Indeed, Fanny, I’m sure you will be glad to hear that Mr Martell is to go to London afterwards and has proposed that Edward and I should travel with him. Great as the delights of Bath must be, I’m sure they cannot compare with London, so I fear we shall not be seeing you and Mrs Grockleton there.

That was it. Louisa had forgotten to enquire after her health or even to seem sorry at their not meeting. There was something else, too, about the letter. At first Fanny could not quite put her finger on what it was, but gradually, as she pondered it, she saw the intention clearly enough. A note of triumph: her cousin was telling her plainly that she had done better. A coldness: behind the brief, throwaway regret at not seeing her, Louisa was really saying that she had more exciting things to do and she didn’t care if Fanny knew it.

So, Fanny thought grimly, my cousin and close friend doesn’t love me. Apart from her father and Aunt Adelaide, did anyone? Mr Gilpin, perhaps, but it was his duty to love. Maybe there was little to love about her anyway. And the sense of her worthlessness and the pointlessness of all things overwhelmed her, so that life itself seemed like a great, grey winter wave breaking and then receding upon an empty shore.

The incident that took place at the end of February in the fashionable spa city of Bath was, you might think, an almost trivial event. Yet it was not seen in that way at the time. Within days there was hardly a person in the whole of Bath, despite the fact that practically no one knew the unfortunate young lady in question, who had not taken sides. The matter was of such curiosity because it was so hard to explain. Theories abounded. It cannot be said that all this talk, none of it even known to the unfortunate young lady, did anyone much harm or good. Except, that is, for the impoverished major who had danced and talked with her at the Assembly Rooms. For on the strength of this intimate knowledge of the subject, he was soon much in demand, invited to dine in houses where he’d never been asked before, with his chances of finding a rich widow enhanced considerably.

Fanny Albion, meanwhile, was in gaol.

‘Mrs Pride must come with me.’ Aunt Adelaide was firm and, in such circumstances, even old Francis could hardly argue; but he did somewhat plaintively enquire who was going to look after him. ‘You are going to stay with the Gilpins,’ his sister told him.

Mr Gilpin had wanted to go to Fanny himself but Adelaide had persuaded him that he could be more help in looking after her brother. ‘I could have no peace of mind leaving him without Mrs Pride,’ she told him and so the old man was conveyed down to the vicarage, with which he pronounced himself well enough pleased. Mr Gilpin, meanwhile, contented himself with a letter.

My dear child,

How or why this strange business has arisen I can scarcely guess. Nor can I imagine that you could ever perform any act of malice or dishonesty. I am praying for you and ask you to remember – more than that, to know that you are in God’s hands. Trust Him, and know that the Truth shall make you free.

To Adelaide he said only: ‘Get a good lawyer.’

So the intrepid old lady and Mrs Pride set off together to make the seventy-mile journey to Bath. On the turnpike roads, with changes of horses, they could arrive there upon the second day.

It was a source of fury to Mrs Grockleton that Fanny should be held in prison at all, but all that good lady’s efforts had been in vain. For some reason – perhaps it was something he had eaten, or merely the fact that the trial judge was to arrive shortly – the magistrate had ordered that Fanny was to be held in the city gaol. Not even Mrs Grockleton’s threat to have the Customs men inspect his house had moved him.

Insofar as was possible, the small prison where she was held had been made comfortable for her. She had her own cell, food, everything she could need. She was treated with politeness as those set to guard her had no wish to displease the generous and slightly frightening Mrs Grockleton, who was constantly visiting. Mr Grockleton, meanwhile, had already secured the services of Bath’s leading law firm to defend her and the head of the firm himself had been to see Fanny three times.

Surely, therefore, it should not be long before this regrettable matter was cleared up and Fanny set at liberty. It should be so. Yet, on each of the three occasions, the distinguished legal gentleman had come away shaking his head. ‘I cannot obtain a statement from her,’ he confessed.

So that finally Mr Grockleton was moved to suggest to his wife what had been in his mind for some time. ‘Supposing she did it,’ he said.

The outrage with which this was received did that stout lady credit. ‘If you ever say such a thing again, Mr Grockleton, I shall box your ears.’

So Mr Grockleton said no more. But he wondered, all the same.

The shop was not a large emporium, but a busy one: buttons and bows, ribbons, every kind of fine lace. You might find ladies, dressmakers, all sorts of people in there, buying the small oddments without which, in Bath, life would be almost meaningless.

It had been a slow, dull day and the afternoon was already losing light, as though someone were drawing down the blinds, when Fanny Albion had started to move towards the door. She had been in the shop for some time, drifting listlessly round the tables, inspecting pieces of silk and other fashionable fripperies. She had no real desire to buy anything and had only come in there because she lacked the energy, or the will, to walk up the hill towards her lodgings. Her mind had been full of melancholy reflections. During her wanderings the bag on her arm had come open. After spending about twenty minutes in this way, she had lingered, in an abstracted way, for several minutes by a round table on which were displayed a large number of pieces of fine lace, some of which she had picked up. Then, calmly closing her handbag, she had moved towards the door.