London (130 page)

Several minutes passed as Balthazar worked on her hair and she contemplated this prospect. Finally, having reassured herself that her plans were in good order, she allowed her gaze to wander to another figure close by her side. For, as well as Balthazar, one other person had also been allowed into the room and he was now sitting silently on a little stool, just within her reach if it amused her to take notice of him, which she now did by stroking his head. He was a round-faced boy, eleven years old, dressed in a little crimson coat like the footmen, and he looked at her with large, adoring eyes. His name was Pedro. He was black.

“Aren’t you lucky, Pedro, that it was I who bought you?” her ladyship asked; and the boy nodded eagerly. For no fashionable household was complete without a pretty, dark-skinned plaything like this. Pedro was a slave.

If a black man had been an object of curiosity in London a century before, he certainly was not now. The busy British colonies had seen to that. Nearly fifty thousand slaves a year were being shipped from Africa to work the sugar plantations of the West Indies and the tobacco plantations of Virginia. Even Puritan Massachusetts was engaged in the trade. Often such shipments came through England; and though Bristol and Liverpool were the greatest ports for slave-ships, nearly a quarter came from London where Negro boys were often bought as toys and domestic servants.

“Tell me, Pedro,” she teased, “do you love me?”

Technically the boy was a slave, but he lived with the servants; and the servants in aristocratic houses lived exceedingly well. Beautifully clothed, well-enough housed, well fed and reasonably paid, they formed an élite. Footmen especially did well because they were often lent out to others. The serried ranks of footmen at an assembly, even in the greatest ducal households, would mostly have been borrowed from other noble friends. Tips could be generous. A London footman who knew how to make himself agreeable could probably save enough in due course to set himself up in business. Similarly, Pedro the slave knew that, if she chose, Lady St James could set him free one day and put him on the path to prosperity. Black butlers and shopkeepers were not unknown. Yet if he had gone to a Virginia plantation . . .

“Oh yes, my lady.” And he covered her hands – it was a liberty which amused her – with boyish kisses.

“I bought him and he loves me,” she laughed. “Don’t worry, my little man,” she glanced down and chuckled, “you are becoming a little man, aren’t you? You shall never be sold. If you’re good.”

It always seemed to Lady St James that everything, and everyone, in London was for sale. Slaves were for sale, fine houses were for sale, fashion was for sale, social position too – for old money, in Georgian London, certainly mixed with new. Even her husband’s title, like so many others, had once been bought. The votes of numerous members of the House of Commons, her husband assured her, were daily for sale. There was only one trouble. And it was this, now, that made her grow quietly thoughtful again. A certain person, it seemed, was not for sale.

Captain Jack Meredith. She pursed her lips. It was difficult to buy him; she wished she could. She wished it very much. To have him, for her very own . . .

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock upon the door. When Pedro opened it, it was her husband who entered.

The third Earl of St James was not in a very good humour. With one hand he dismissed Pedro and Balthazar. In the other hand was a sheaf of bills.

He was neither good-looking nor bad-looking. Taking after his fair, conventionally pretty mother, you could only say that his looks were bland. Not that he was stupid: his investments, though cautious, had been shrewd; the Bocton estate was well run; he was an active member of the House of Lords in the Whig interest. (Hanover Square was much favoured by Whig politicians.) He had put on his powdered wig and was wearing a richly embroidered blue coat, in whose broad opening he exhibited the first beginnings of a respectable paunch. In his early forties now, Lord St James, in another decade, would probably look rather impressive. His hands, always beautifully manicured, were universally agreed to be fine. The wad of bills in his left hand, however, was large. He made only a brief bow to his wife before he began.

“I think you will agree, madam, that I satisfy most of your desires.”

Lady St James made no reply, but eyed him cautiously. She had to be careful what she said. She had wanted him, for instance, to tear down the old Jacobean manor house at Bocton. “Quite inadequate for an earl,” she would tell her friends. A Georgian mansion with a pillared portico, even half the size she recommended, would look imposing on the hill above the deer park. His cautious lordship was still thinking about it and, for all she knew, might decide to do it. He had steadfastly refused to allow her to make over the whole town house in the French rococo manner. “Though you see it is the highest fashion,” she had constantly reminded him. So far she had only been allowed a Chinese papered drawing room as consolation. Indeed, so much was she subject, nowadays, to his will, that she could only remember one complete success – and this was one which she would never publicly acknowledge. She had managed to change his family name.

To be Earl of St James was a fine thing. As plain Miss Barham, the prospect of becoming his countess had certainly been enticing. But Ducket: that was another matter. Why, half the memorial tablets in London proclaimed some Ducket or other to have been an alderman, guild member or merchant. Earls they might recently have become, but the family was rooted in trade. And here was the remarkable thing: fashionable young Miss Barham found this humiliating.

History is the servant of fashion. To the end of the Stuart age, the younger sons of the gentry were still becoming mercers and drapers, as they always had. Nowadays however, if they possibly could, they avoided it. Instead, they favoured the army – which had scarcely existed before – or the Church, which their grandfathers would certainly have looked down upon. They might also, at a pinch, become lawyers. History, obligingly, supplied the example of the feudal knight or Roman senator as model to back the fashion up; and so, from the middle part of the eighteenth century, the upper classes of England came genuinely to believe the adage: “Gentlemen do not engage in trade.” It was a piece of historical nonsense that continued to govern men’s lives for more than two centuries to come.

Their merchant forefathers were forgotten or suppressed. Gentility and trade could not be mixed. The fashion was redeemed by only one concession to common sense. A gentleman could marry trade. Even in the most snobbish and august decades of that century of Georgian elegance, gentlemen and noblemen, including even the ducal families, cheerfully and publicly married the daughters of merchants. Their French or German counterparts would have been appalled. They didn’t give a damn. In England, it was only the male line that counted.

But the male line of the house of St James still carried the tradesman’s name of Ducket and it was hard for Miss Barham to bear. To oblige her therefore the young earl, who at that time was quite dazzled by her – she was the belle of every ball – changed the spelling to the French-seeming, if improbable, de Quette. It was, she told her friends, the older form of the name which only time had corrupted; and it was soon generally accepted that the earl’s family name must have come over with the Norman conquest. Some ancestors are born, others made: the de Quettes were not the only family to perform some carpentry on their name.

“Though it is pronounced,” she would say, with a show of English firmness, “Ducket.”

But that, she thought sadly, was the last time he had really tried to please her. She had her name now, her house; but as for the rest . . .

“These bills, madam. Have you seen them?”

Lady St James made a faint sound that might have meant anything. She never looked at bills.

“They are large, Lady St James,” he said.

“Are we in difficulties?” she asked innocently, “must I sell Pedro?” She sighed. “Pray do not tell me, my lord, that we are ruined.”

“Not quite,” he remarked drily. He knew that she suspected he was richer than he cared to admit; and indeed, as with many of his class, the burgeoning colonial trade and improved farming methods were yearly increasing his already substantial income. Even the expense of the London house was mitigated by the fact that most of the meat and produce consumed there was brought in by cart, once a week, from the estate in Kent. That very morning, though he had no intention of telling her, he had received plans for a new mansion at Bocton. “If we are not ruined, it is because I live within my income,” he stated. “Madam, I have here bills from tradesmen that total three hundred pounds.”

Lady St James threw up her eyes, and might have thrown up her head too, except that it would have disturbed Balthazar’s work on her hair.

“Perhaps we need not pay them all,” she suggested. Lady St James’s generosity, so pleasantly shown to her servants, did not extend to tradesmen.

Lord St James began to read them out. A hatmaker, milliner, Twining the tea-seller, her shoemaker, dressmaker, two perfume-sellers, Fleming the baker, even a bookseller. To most of these she replied with a little groan, or a murmur. “Robbery”, or “Impossible”. Finally he came to an end.

“The dressmaker must be paid,” she said firmly. She would never find another as good. She thought for a moment. She suspected all the bills were justified, but the baker’s annoyed her. She had held a huge party and decided, as she put it herself, to decorate the room with cakes. The party had not been a success. “Give me the baker’s bill,” she cried. “I’ll make the fellow eat it.” Actually, she meant to throw it in the fire. Fleming the baker could wait. He was not important.

She hoped, now, that her husband would go. He did not. Instead he cleared his throat.

“There is another matter, madam, that I wish to discuss.” She waited, offering nothing. “The family of de Quette, madam. I am the third earl. I still have no heir.” There was another pause. “Something must be done.” He gazed at her steadily. “I do not doubt that I am able.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Faintly.

“When, madam?”

“Soon. We are so busy at present. The season . . .” She collected herself. “Shall we not be at Bocton this summer? In the country?” She contrived a smile. “At Bocton, William.” It was his name.

But even though she smiled, it was difficult for Lady St James to convey even the modicum of encouragement necessary for her own self-preservation. A wife might avoid, but could not absolutely refuse her husband. If only, in his presence, she did not feel so discouraged.

Why was it so? she used to ask herself. What had he done? He was quite a good-looking figure of a man. If only, she sometimes told herself, he was not so cautious. If only he would take some wild risk – though not one, she admitted to herself, that could jeopardize their comfort. What did she want, then? A year ago she could scarcely have said. But now?

Now she wanted Jack Meredith. And as long as he was in London, her husband was insupportable to her.

“You gave me,” he reminded her gently, “an heir once before.”

She closed her eyes.

“I know.” Dear God, she thought, why must he mention that?

“I’m sorry. Poor little George.”

It was an area of darkness, the thing they did not mention. The death of the baby boy eight years before. Even now, Lord St James remained mystified by the business, and for her ladyship, who had been quite devastated at the time, it was the subject that must never be discussed. Lord St James had just broken the rule. But today, it seemed, he was not prepared to act the penitent entirely.

“Summer is a long way off,” he said briefly, and retired, leaving Lady St James staring into silence.

Lady St James sat quite alone.

That night. The horror of that night, eight years ago, when the child had been born.

Her labour had been long; afterwards she had lain exhausted for a time and dozed a little, glad that it was over. She had not enjoyed the business of being pregnant. To be so big, so clumsy: it was terrible. But now, at least, she had felt a sense of achievement. The baby was born a boy, to be called George, after his grandfather. But what really mattered to her was that he was the heir to an earl, with a courtesy title of his own from the moment of birth: little Lord Bocton. Hearing the baby cry, she had told the nurse to bring him to her. Smiling, she had held the baby up, to inspect him by the candlelight. And then her face had fallen.

She had expected the child to be pretty. Fair at least, like its parents. But the little creature already had hair that was dark. Stranger yet, there seemed to be a curious white streak in the middle. Even this, however, was nothing to what she found next. For as she had taken the baby’s tiny fist and opened the hand with her finger and thumb, she had discovered something else.

She let out a little scream. The baby’s fingers were webbed.

“It’s not mine,” she shrieked. “You’ve brought me another child. Where’s mine?”

“No, your ladyship,” the nurse promised. “It’s yours.”

“Witch! Thief! It can’t be.” But just then the doctor entered and assured her that this was, indeed, just how the child had been born.

Dear God, she thought, how could she show such a thing to her friends? A sense of horror filled her: horror at the baby; horror at herself – but no, this could not be her fault; horror at her husband therefore, who had caused her to have such a thing.

“Take it away,” she cried, and fell back on the pillow.

It had been fortunate that, soon afterwards, Lord St James had been obliged to make a journey to the north of England, leaving her alone in London. For by this time she had formed her plan.

The interview with the wet-nurse had given her the idea. It was, of course, unthinkable for a lady of the countess’s station to suckle her own child. A buxom young woman had been found, who was due to give birth the month before. And it was during the interview that the girl had casually remarked:

“I’ve always plenty of milk, my lady; enough for yours to share. Unless my baby dies. Then yours will have it all.”