The Regency (97 page)

The mamas did not like their darlings' being snubbed
either. 'There's something disagreeably hard about Fanny Morland,' they would say. 'Something unfeminine — hoy
denish — blue.’

‘Fanny Morland is very blue — quite an
eccentric, upon my life.’

‘I do not like to see a young woman so
immediately up to everything as Fanny Morland. London has
quite spoiled her.’

She knew all these things were said of her, and she didn't
care. She could not conceive that she would ever meet any
man she could love enough to want to marry, since she was more strong and clever than they, and she could not endure
to marry a weakling. So she had concentrated instead, since
her return to Morland Place, on learning everything she could
about the running of the estate. She found, as Miss Rosedale
had told her again and again through her unheeding child
hood, that there was something very satisfying in exercising
the intellect. The harder she worked, and the more she
learned, the more she liked it. One day she had found Uncle
Ned asking her opinion about something —
Uncle Ned!
—
and she had realised what it was that was happening to her.
Business was more exciting than men and flirtations! Power
was more thrilling than love! From that realisation, it was an
obvious next step to turn her attention to her grandfather's
mills.

There was no doubt that her grandfather loved her and
favoured her, but how engrained was his prejudice against
females? She could not be sure, even after another season of
working on him, that he would indeed leave the mills to her. Well, if he did not leave them to her, he would leave them to
Jasper, she reasoned; and so, she had better get to like Jasper, or at least get him to like her.

It was not easy. She could not like his person, and she
despised his weakness, which had allowed him to remain sub
servient all his life, and which constantly erupted in foolish
indulgence towards the mill-workers. He could not forget, she
thought, that he was one of them by birth, and it told against
him. Unless he could shake off his origins, he would never get
anywhere — and it looked increasingly as though he were too
old to shake them off. She did not want to trust him with her
mills. He would not run them as ruthlessly as Grandpapa or
she would; the hard task was to convince Grandpapa of that.
He had grown used to relying on Jasper, and he was touchy
about hearing him criticised. She had to tread warily.

*

When she returned to the carriage, she told the coachman to
drive to Madame Renee's shop in King Street, to see whether
her new gown was ready. It had been promised for Friday,
but she thought if it were ready today, she might as well wear
it at the assembly tomorrow night. There was a barouche drawn up at the kerbstone right opposite the shop, so the
coachman had to pull up behind it, opposite the alley which
ran down the side of the building. As the carriage stopped and
Fanny looked out of the window, she was surprised to see a
priest letting himself out of the little door which she knew led
to Madame Renee's private quarters.

She knew who he was: a papist missionary priest who was
said to do a great deal of good amongst the labouring poor of
Manchester. She had never actually met him — though
Grandfather was a papist himself, he disapproved of this
Father Rathbone, as Fanny had learned the one time he had
been mentioned in Grandfather's presence — but she had
seen him around the town now and then. He had a rather
raffish, piratical appearance which attracted her, reminding
her just a little of a certain person.

She was even more surprised when she entered the shop a
moment later to find it empty. She looked around impatiently,
and then, in her usual direct way, walked briskly to the
door at the back of the shop and went through into the
back-room. It was filled with heaps of tacked and half-made
gowns, bales of materials, busts and full-size mannequins,
ledgers and papers and a spike overflowing with bills; and also
a very shabby, rather soiled brocade-covered chaise-longue,
before which stood Madame Renee, her skirt pulled up to her
thigh as she fastened her garter around the one stocking she
had on, the other being draped ready over her shoulder.

She turned with a gasp of dismay as Fanny came in,
dropped her skirt, put her hands to her tousled head; and
then, as Fanny raised a questioning brow, she reddened and
said, 'Miss Morland! Why — what are you doing here? How
did you get in? I was not expecting —'

‘
Evidently,' said Fanny coolly. 'The door was open. I came
to see if my gown was ready.’

‘But I locked the door! I made sure I had locked it! Did you
not see the "closed" notice?’

Fanny suddenly remembered the priest in the alley, and
began to feel this was no place for her. In any case, she would
not bandy words with a mantuamaker. She turned away with
a curl of the lip.

‘
If the gown is ready, you may send it to Hobsbawn House
at once, if you please.'

‘
Wait! Miss Morland! I — I don't wish you to think —
I had been feeling unwell, you see. I had the headache,
and closed the shop so that I could lie down. I thought I
had locked the door, but in my haste I suppose I must have
forgot —’

Fanny made a gesture of dismissal with one hand and
walked out, closing the door behind her. As she passed
through the street door, she saw that there was, indeed, a notice propped in the corner of the frame saying 'Closed,
owing to ill-health', which she had not seen as she entered.
Madame Renee, of course, could not know that she had seen
the priest leaving; she was flustered at having been caught
tying her garter in a state of
deshabille.
Fanny reflected on it
as she drove back to her grandfather's house. Information,
however shocking, was always worth having. You never knew
when it might become useful. She had learned that, she freely acknowledged, from her little cousin Rosamund.

*

 
Jasper Hobsbawn dressed in his best clothes and seated in the
drawing-room at Hobsbawn House with a glass of sherry in his hand, still looked a little out of place. He was perfectly
correctly dressed in a swallow-tail coat, white waistcoat and
small-clothes, and his hair had been drawn tidily into a queue
at the back of his head with a bit of black ribbon; he had
washed twice, and shaved himself so close his skin burned,
and had scrubbed and gouged at his nails for fully twenty
minutes; and he had made his housekeeper — his only servant
— clean his shoes again.

But there still hung about him a kind of drab sourness of
which he was as bitterly aware as his hostess could have been,
though to be sure she was too well-mannered to show it to a
guest in her own house. His skin, he knew, had the kind of
dinginess which came from a restricted diet of bacon and
dark bread: the dinginess of poverty. There was a meagreness
about his body, which he felt most clearly when he looked at
the bright eyes, clear skin, and firm rounded limbs of a young woman who had been cossetted and cared for all her life; who
had eaten well and slept soundly between fine sheets and
breathed clean air, unpolluted by the noise and dirt of the
factories.

Fanny had been called away for a few minutes by the butler, and on her return, in answer to her grandfather's
query, she said, 'It was only a messenger from the mantua
maker, Grandpapa, bringing my new gown for the assembly
tomorrow.'

‘
Another new gown?' Hobsbawn said, pretending to frown.
‘Why, Fan, you've more gowns than you can wear in a year!
You'll ruin me with your mantuamaker's bills!’

Fanny, knowing that he liked nothing better than to spend
money on her, and especially on her clothes, crossed the room
to lean over the back of his chair and kiss his forehead.

‘
Oh, but Grandpapa,' she pouted prettily, 'it was such a
lovely length of silk, I simply had to have it. It's French ivory,
with little silver acorns embroidered all over it — you can't
conceive how pretty! — and not at all expensive.'

‘
And what do you call
not expensive?'
Hobsbawn said,
beetling his brows.

‘
Fifty guineas — but that includes making up,' Fanny said,
playing along with him, pretending to think him angry. And
I used the spider-lace off my old poplin for the trimming,
instead of having new.'

‘
Why didn't you have new trimming? D'ye think I can't
afford to buy my girl new clothes?' Hobsbawn said indignantly.
’I don't want you picking over old gowns, like some shop
keeper's daughter.’

Fanny laughed at his change of position. 'No, Grandpapa,
but that lace is better than anything Madame Renee had. I got it in London when I came out, and it was Mechlin and
cost eight shillings.'

‘Eight shillings, eh?' Hobsbawn said happily.

‘
And Prudence Pendlebury came into the shop just after
I'd bought the silk, and she was wild, because she had wanted it herself,' Fanny said, knowing how to please him. 'But there
was only ten yards, and I took it all, for you know hems are
wider this year.'

‘
Just as well — you'll do it more credit than ever Miss
Pendlebury could,' Hobsbawn chuckled. 'And you are to
wear this confection tomorrow, are you, Puss? I shall look forward to seeing it. You are going to the assembly, aren't
you, Jasper?’

Jasper, who had been listening impatiently to this game,
was startled at being addressed, and answered unwisely. The
assembly? Not I!’

Hobsbawn frowned. 'And why not, may I ask? Our assemblies are the finest in the North, let me tell you, young man,
and there's many a person in York or even London who
would not feel it beneath them to attend.’

Jasper looked down at his feet. His silk stockings had a tiny
darn in them, which seemed to him horribly noticeable in the
brightness of so many candles. 'It isn't that, sir. I'm not a
great one for dancing, that's all.'

‘
Well, you don't have to dance — or at least, not all the
time. It would look odd if you did not stand up for one or two,
but the important thing is to be there, and let people see you.
You shall go tomorrow, Jasper.'