3 Great Historical Novels (94 page)

Rosina had arranged to meet her friend Diana at Essex Hall in the Strand. Rosina did not make friends easily, and was pleased when Diana had responded to her invitation to join her. Diana had studied the natural sciences at Girton, one of the few grudged Cambridge colleges for women, and though students received their lectures in a room above a baker’s shop, at least they were allowed to study, if not to graduate. Girl students were not welcome at Cambridge, especially now they had taken to hitching up their skirts and cycling through the streets to lectures. Indeed, the effigy of a girl cyclist had been hung and burned in the Cambridge Town Square in Diana’s second year. But Diana continued to cycle bravely on, though many other girls stopped.

Diana turned up to the meeting in the Strand on a bicycle, to the cheers of those gathering there to hear Sidney and Beatrice Webb talk on the nationalization of land. Rosina felt at ease in Diana’s company. She was a handsome, vigorous girl, almost as tall as Rosina. Like Rosina, she had not done the Season out of principle, much to the alarm of her family. She was Anthony Robin’s younger sister. Tonight she seemed troubled, and confided in Rosina, promising her to secrecy.

Her brother Anthony, she said, who was engaged to be married to a charming girl, one of her pals, was apparently a
frequent visitor to a woman of bad repute in Half Moon Street. A cab driver had told her maid, who had told her. What should she do: tell his fiancée, her friend, or say nothing and let the marriage go ahead?

‘Say nothing,’ Rosina advised. ‘Young men do that sort of thing. He will stop when he’s married. Good heavens, if marriages didn’t go ahead because the groom was not a virgin, there would be remarkably few marriages in the land.’

Diana said that was not all that was worrying her. She was sorry if this was news to Rosina but her brother Arthur was joining him in these seedy escapades. She had asked Tony and it seemed Arthur paid the rent. Under the definition of the new Amendment to the Vagrancy Act this made the dwelling a brothel, and though Arthur could probably not be convicted as a pimp, the press might get hold of it and there could be a nasty scandal, which would harm both her brother’s career in the Bank and Rosina’s father’s political career. Particularly as the Earl had in his time paid rent on the same premises.

‘How on earth do you know all this?’ asked Rosina. Arthur, that did not surprise her. But her father – could it be true?

‘Tony told me all,’ said Diana. ‘Flora – that’s her name – told him that your father was her original protector. She asked him not to tell Arthur because Arthur thought he was her first, and she didn’t want him seeing her as used goods. Of course, she may be inventing this sorry tale to justify herself in some way, but it all makes sense. My brother says I am being obsessive about the dangers and has no intention of stopping his visits. Men tend to be so innocent about what happens next. I thought perhaps your brother should be warned.’

And then the bell rang and it was time for everyone to troop back into the hall, though a few had left because it was a rather boring talk, in which Sidney had spent an hour
explaining what he meant by saying that rents collected by landowners were unearned, for surely the ground we walked upon was ours? The second half was equally dull, which was as well because Rosina was in a state of shock and had a great deal to think about. Her father, unfaithful to her mother to the extent of setting up a mistress? It could only be the Prince’s influence. And her mother? One’s father’s past infidelity was not something one mentioned to one’s mother. Should she be presented with the truth, if it was really true? No, hardly; it was of the question. No matter how one’s mother irritated one, one did not want to destroy her. Better to let the matter lie.

Arthur was another matter. He should be ashamed of himself. Diana’s brother, and her brother, each wooing proper girls while keeping a whore behind their backs. Arthur’s Minnie, mind you, was not exactly innocent according to Grace. Nor did Rosina believe for one moment that Arthur loved Minnie, or Minnie, Arthur – he wanted money and she wanted rank. The falsity of his smile was evident when he spoke to his parents, and to her, Rosina, of what a topping girl Minnie was. Not that an engagement had been announced, but Arthur had told so many people he was going to drive Minnie down to Dilberne Court in the Jehu to show the place off to her, it could only suggest to all that he saw her as a future bride and chatelaine of Dilberne. And all the time he was sneaking off (twice a week Diana had said) to this Floratrollop’s den of vice to meet up with Tony Robin, there to have his cake and to eat it too. Five years before she had thought Tony might be one man she could possibly marry: at least he was clever and serious, and one could sometimes have a decent conversation with him. But he’d quickly formed an attachment to another girl, a diminutive and very silly beauty, a Duke’s
daughter. A mere earl’s daughter like Rosina was obviously not quite good enough for him, especially when she was three inches taller than he.

Reginald was there in the cab to pick Rosina up when the meeting ended. Diana cycled off on her bicycle, hair flying in the wind, wearing a crimson high-necked and red-corded tailored jacket, with cross-braiding down the bodice and a vaguely military air, a pair of divided skirts gathered at the ankles, and high-laced button boots. Rosina, who usually attracted attention in some loose and flowing modern gown, felt positively old-fashioned; not to mention cross, embarrassed, and ashamed that Diana knew so much about her family and to its discredit.

Rosina had not been best pleased when Isobel sent Grace off to work for Mrs O’Brien. She could hardly complain, having once told her mother that she had no use for a lady’s maid, that she was perfectly able to draw her own bath, do her own hair, look after her own clothes and it was ridiculous for a perfectly healthy woman to ask another woman to do these things for her. But then she had been eighteen, and had not realized how much of adult life was spent seeing to appearance. Even the maids would change their clothes three or four times a day, if only adding or removing a starched and pleated cap or a frilled apron. On Mondays when the agency laundresses came in the rooms were foggy with steam which came up from the laundry, and the smell of burnt fabric as over-heated irons dashed to and fro over lace and muslin too fragile to endure them. It was amazing how much work two women of the leisured classes required.

She had managed to persuade her mother to send the laundry out. And though her father demurred, asking how she thought the laundresses were going to live if her mother didn’t employ
them, Rosina replied, ‘Why, in professional laundries where they will be properly trained and worth the money they get.’

Meanwhile, as a governess she once had used to say, ‘The miners in Africa starve.’ Methodist Miss Penny would not have approved at all of the Dilberne’s involvement with gold mining. If the Modder Kloof gold mine subsided and took down the family fortune with it, Rosina, hot from Essex Hall in the Strand, could see it was no more than they deserved. Bad enough to profit from the labour of workers on the land – for them to exploit the labour of those poor beneath it was doubly disgraceful. She wanted no part of it.

She was angry with her father for having made a mockery of his marriage: she was angry with her mother for letting him do it. Her brother was a hypocrite and a liar. She was angry with herself for her complacency in the past. She could see herself now as one of the oppressed of the world. She would earn her own living. Medical school would not accept her – she had fewer educational qualifications even than Grace – so she would go to Mr Pitman’s secretarial college, learn shorthand typing and earn her own living: perhaps she could work in the offices of a Trades Union Congress or for the Fabian Society itself. She would move away from home and live in some romantic little room down by the river and be a bohemian. Or perhaps she could learn to paint, and be an artist? The world was full of opportunities!

By the time she got home to Belgrave Square, in time to change for the d’Astis’ salon, she had decided what her response would be to the Arthur dilemma. She would ask Minnie out shopping, before any engagement was announced, and warn her about the kind of man she was marrying.

She had to dress without Grace’s help. That did not help her temper. She flung a dozen outfits to the ground before she
chose what she thought was appropriate to the event. A plain blue velvet dress and a small grey-brimmed hat with a wide leopardskin band round its crown worn at a rakish angle. It made her look modern and intelligent; if she was not to be valued for her looks she would be valued for her mind.

It was an enjoyable evening at the salon. Mr H.G. Wells was there, bouncing and squeaking away, and the Countess d’Asti gushed and squawked, her shelf of a bosom draped in layers of flimsy lace, very much mutton dressed as lamb. Rosina could never work out why her mother took the woman so seriously. The writers and artists who clustered round ‘dear Freddie’, as they loved to call her, were after her free food and drink and the occasional hand-out. At least her mother kept her dignity.

The lion of the evening was Henry James himself, haughty and dignified, up from Sussex. There was a most extraordinary story going the rounds that he remained unmarried because he had deliberately sat on a white-hot stove to scald himself and thus make himself unfit to be a husband. It was the kind of thing one heard at the d’Astis’.

H.G. Wells affected not to recognize Henry James, rather unkindly asking who the hippopotamus was. Mr James for his part seemed to rather admire H.G. as one who cultivated the common touch, of which Mr James was incapable, seeming to have been born stately and incapable of a short sentence. Rosina noted how, while her mother liked to invite guests who ‘got on’, the Countess deliberately chose those whom she hoped would not. Rosina’s parents had declared themselves indisposed, which Rosina knew to be a lie. Arthur had simply not turned up. Rosina supposed he was off with his whore.

But Mrs O’Brien and her daughter Minnie were present. Rosina introduced herself and was studiously pleasant and
polite. The mother was just very Irish, with a loud voice, a red face and the cheerful air of the unthinking. She was nicely dressed, looking as good as her stout figure could allow, which presumably was because of Grace. Rosina herself was feeling rather under-dressed: none of the other women present seemed to want in the least to be valued for their minds. Minnie was smaller than Rosina had imagined, nice-featured, and a little frumpish in a dull bronze silk dress which did not particularly become her – perhaps Grace hated her. Nor was Minnie forthcoming on the subject of Arthur, beyond saying his mount had been the pride of Rotten Row, as hers was certainly not, and they had had to take shelter from the rain.

But the girl was not fit to be a Hedleigh and bring the mother’s genes into the family, and heaven knew what the father was like. A meat baron, a stockyard king! A gangster! And – worse – Minnie proved she was just too intolerably American: she picked at Rosina’s velvet gown, and said what a beautiful colour and texture the fabric was. English ladies avoided touching one another if it could be avoided. Minnie was just hopelessly
foreign
.

But her behaviour did give Rosina the opportunity of saying ‘It’s a Liberty’s fabric. I would be more than happy to show you their little shop. We could have lunch or tea together there perhaps, and get to know each other better.’

And Minnie had said she would be delighted, she surely would.

The Countess of Dilberne had resigned herself to proper consideration of the Prince of Wales dinner and now discussed it with her husband. The menu had been decided, she told him, the invitations sent out: it was to be for twenty-eight. The number of guests was dictated by the size of the table. She began to feel she needed a larger dining table, perhaps one in a paler wood. Maple, perhaps? Mahogany was beginning to look heavy and old-fashioned. The cost of the dinner? Only sixty pounds, perhaps, when the need to hire liveried footmen and a silver butler was counted in.

‘More like seventy-five,’ said her husband.

‘How did you know?’ she asked, surprised.

‘Whenever you say “only”, I know you have underestimated by a quarter or thereabouts, so as not to alarm me. It is the normal habit of the female.’

‘It is because men always say “outrageous” if one speaks the truth about expense,’ observed her Ladyship. Rosina, she added, had taken the opportunity to point out that this was twice what Grace earned in a year; Isobel had remarked that it was also a third of Rosina’s allowance for the year, at which Rosina drifted off, no doubt to feed her pet parrot its very expensive Brazil nuts.

‘I told the girl it really was an unkindness to keep a flying bird cooped up in a living room with its wings clipped, and
horribly unhealthy,’ said Isobel. ‘And more, the servants have to waste time cleaning up after it.’

Rosina had not bothered to reply, just raised her eyebrows. Goodness gracious, Isobel suddenly realized, the girl is jealous. She feels neglected because Grace is dressing Minnie O’Brien. Because she fears she is not attractive to men, and is too tall to be anyone’s instant choice, and too proud to admit it to anyone. She would rather drive men off than risk rebuff. And she blames me because I am her mother and have failed to bring her into a perfect world.

She applied her mind to the dinner again. There were to be twelve courses: pheasant soup, caviar, tartlets of crayfish in a cream sauce, turbot with tartar sauce, grouse sautéed in sherry, ducklings
foie gras
with brandy and truffles, baron of lamb, a liqueur sorbet, salad, cheeses, fruit, and a
gelée marbrée
.

Robert complained that twelve courses were perhaps not lavish enough for a royal dinner, but Isobel held firm, saying it was more than enough for a private dinner. Isobel murmured about the price but Robert said she should leave the worrying to him, inasmuch as after the next cabinet shuffle she might well find herself wife to a Minister of the Crown; and whoever had heard of a bankrupt Minister? This so relieved and pleased Isobel that she offered to add another course, of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and horseradish sauce, between the duck and the lamb, but Robert blenched and said she was probably right, twelve was more than enough. It was nearly the twentieth century, and probably by the end of it, the way things were going, and fewer courses becoming fashionable, just a tartlet, or salad and cheese with a College Pudding would satisfy even the grandest. Isobel went up on her toes and kissed Robert’s cheek, saying she was the luckiest and happiest woman alive, and truly feeling it.