An Accomplished Woman (7 page)

‘And is not the regiment
sometimes called the China Tenth?’ asked Lydia. ‘As it is too fragile to bear
rough handling, and chiefly devotes itself to guarding the Prince at Brighton?’

‘Another excellent
reason for choosing it,’ Hanley said, smiling, and not at all put out. ‘I
certainly did not join the army with the vulgar intention of seeing bloodshed.
But you may be assured that if Boney lands at Brighton, I shall be there with
my sword drawn ready to defend my prince. Or a bit of him. I do dislike these
references to His Royal Highness’s girth, but in truth it would take half a
brigade just to surround him.’

The cider appeared with
the ancient waiter — so ancient and shrivelled that when he turned away from
the box his livery-coat stood still and he had to tug it round after him.
Outside the box a frisky wind had sprung up, setting the lamps in the trees
dancing, fooling with epaulettes and ribbons, and flourishing on an invisible
tray the smells of boiled fowl, bruised turf and night-time.

Lydia, seated beside
Hugh Hanley, employed the moment to take the measure of him, knowing he was
doing the same of her.

At home in Lincolnshire
she knew him as the nephew of her father’s friend and neighbour — and yes, very
well, her former suitor — Mr Lewis Durrant of Culverton. After one of his
infrequent visits to his uncle, the gossip of the country would invariably run
on two themes — which young girl was pining for love of him, and how violent
the quarrels had been at Culverton House. What she had seen of him hitherto had
fixed him in Lydia’s mind as a pert fellow with a degree of self-regard
exceptional even for youth; but now she found herself at least prepared to
revise the opinion. He had turned, as George had said, into the complete dandy
— but it suited him: the languor, the artfully dishevelled hair, the garrotting
cravat. It was as if in affectation he had found his natural self. The
heavy-lidded eyes seemed designed for quizzing a suspect hat from the bay
window of Brooks’s: the rather too red and full lips made for dropping choice
on-dits,
probably not kind ones. And it was a relief to find a man of his age simply
at ease with her. Usually they became chucklesome.

‘And how much longer do
you stay in town, Miss Templeton? Shall you be here for the King’s birthday?’

‘His Majesty must
celebrate without me: I leave for Heystead tomorrow.’

Ah, then you will be
able to report to my uncle at once, and tell him you have seen me, and assure
him that I am absolutely as delinquent as he could hope.’

‘Oh, I will certainly,
for there is nothing more important to me than talking about
you;
though
you might consider the possibility that not all the world feels the same.’

‘I shall not rest until
it does.’ He smiled, brushing an imaginary speck from his pantalooned leg.
‘There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is
not
being
talked about.’

And why do you think Mr
Durrant should
hope
to find you delinquent?’

‘Oh, my dear Miss
Templeton, being disappointed in me is his life’s work. It’s what keeps him
going. If I were to start behaving sensibly, my uncle would be lost: Othello’s
occupation’s gone, and whatnot. After all, what else is there for him in his
autumnal years?’

‘Mr Durrant has never
struck me as a man lacking occupation. He is constantly at work improving
Culverton.’

‘Exactly! Culverton! I
dare say he has every last tree and shrub counted and measured by now — every
slate and gate repaired — every needy widow supplied with enough firewood to
warm her for a lifetime. This is a man sadly in need of diversion; and if I can
in my small way supply it, by vexing, astonishing and infuriating him, then I
am at least doing a little good in the world.’

‘Oh Culverton, yes,’
cried George, who rowed in and out of conversations with a cheerful disregard
for their drift, ‘the handsomest place — the finest park. Next time we are at
Heystead, my love, I shall have Durrant invite us over there — or we may have
to invite ourselves, Durrant being the unsociable sort.’

‘If it is anything like
my dear Heystead,’ Susannah said, ‘I know I shall love it.’

‘Indeed, you had better
see it, ma’am, before I ruin it with my extravagance.’ As supper arrived, and
George and Susannah busied themselves with it, Hanley turned in his lithe,
coiled way to Lydia. ‘Well — is that not what my uncle believes?’

‘You credit me with an
oracular comprehension of Mr Durrant’s thoughts. I know he is greatly proud of
Culverton, and concerned for its future: but so much is common knowledge.’

‘Ah, as to that, who
knows? I may turn out to be the perfect squire after all, handling estate-maps
like old love-letters, and waxing lyrical over crop-rotation. But surely, Miss
Templeton, you must hold the key to some aspect of my uncle’s character. As
there is no polite way of putting it, I shall ask with maximum impertinence:
why
did
you turn him down all those years ago? I was a mere schoolboy at
Winchester at the time, being educated in bad habits, and only heard the bare
facts.’

‘Your education was
certainly imperfect, if you suppose that a lady would answer such a question.
But if you are in possession of the bare facts, then really you have the whole
matter. Mr Durrant proposed marriage: I considered: but, as I told him, I was
not contemplating matrimony, with him or anyone else. I wish I could garnish
the tale with romantic consequences and twists of fate; but there aren’t any.’

‘Yet he has never paid
addresses to any woman since.’

‘Oh, Mr Hanley, now you
are embroidering upon those facts most shamelessly. You wholly misjudge Mr
Durrant, if you suppose him nursing the broken heart of the disappointed lover
these nine years. In order to propose at all, Mr Durrant had to overcome a
strong dislike of humankind, and womankind in particular; and my refusing him
only confirmed, I imagine, his prevailing notions, reinforced his pride, and
allowed him to pursue his solitary and self-sufficing way without ever being
troubled by such nonsense again. In that respect I fancy it was even a relief
to him; and so, you see, you are not your uncle’s only benefactor, Mr Hanley.’

‘Indeed — and you are
mine also, Miss Templeton; for if you had not refused him, there would surely
be a brood of little Durrants now, to bar me from the inheritance; and I would
have had to
apply
myself to something. And no doubt would have turned
out a much more creditable fellow. So you see, there is nothing like a rich,
childless uncle to ruin a man: really, with such disadvantages, what chance did
I stand?’

‘A sad history: but a
man may rise above his disadvantages, Mr Hanley’

‘Oh, no, not in dear old
England, ma’am: why else are we fighting France, but to keep that sort of idea
down?’

‘Come, none of your
Radical talk here,’ put in George. ‘Lyddie, take some chicken — and some ham,
if you can see it.’

The sparrow-like
chickens and tissuey ham of Vauxhall had long been a joke, and there was
perhaps more meat to be found in the slugs adorning the salad. Yet Lydia
experienced a moment of peculiar well-being, looking out at the lamplit avenue,
observing the flicker of grins and grimaces, struts and slouches, content to be
where she was. No quarrels with time or place: perhaps that was felicity.

Or perhaps it was
because she had not thought of Bath lately.

‘Shall you remain in the
country until next season?’ Hugh Hanley asked: a mere civil enquiry that went
through her like a jolt.

‘Why — why do you ask?’

‘Because it is the sort
of tedious question one asks over supper,’ he said, with a sidelong amused
look. ‘I asked you a much more impertinent one a moment ago, so I supposed I
was safe.’

‘Yes, of course, I was
just . . .’ Curiously she felt better able at least to touch upon her reasons
with Hugh Hanley than with someone close to her like George. ‘I do have an
invitation to Bath in the summer, but I am not at all inclined to take it up.’

‘Eminently sensible: I
should think you would be bored half to death. I was there for part of a summer
two years ago, and found it a devilish glaring, baking sort of place in hot
weather. And then the chief amusements of the spring season are over: being
Bath, there is always
something
— some little genteel assemblage as
tepid as those ridiculous waters — but one must be very easily pleased to find
much entertainment in it. I am sure you, of all people, would find it monstrous
dull.’

‘Me? Why me of all
people?’

‘My dear Miss Templeton,
this is like conversing with a terrier. Not that I mind it, there is a sort of
interesting suspense in wondering when the next
snap
will come. I say
you,
because you are a woman of intelligence and learning, as is well known: a
genuinely accomplished woman. I have heard my uncle remark that you are the
cleverest woman in the county: though, to be sure, he adds “and she knows it”.
For my part, I am a great blockhead at learning, unless it be the
very
important
things like how to tie a cravat, but even I can tell that the Pump Room in June
is not the place for a lively mind.’

‘I confess I found it
somewhat insipid when last I went. My father decided to try the waters one year,
and we spent an intolerably long month there. Then, at least, I had my father’s
company; but otherwise, it was all so prosy — so bonnety — so whisty and
teacuppy — you see, the adjectives for it do not even exist, and I must invent
them.’

‘Well, here’s a real
one: dowdy. Brighton, now: that’s the place for fashion.’

Not quite her point:
still there was relief in even beginning to make it.

‘Rack-punch!’ cried
George, suddenly. ‘Lyddie, it’s your last night with us, and we are at
Vauxhall, and so we must mark it with rack-punch. Hanley, call that waiter, if
you will be so good. Now, now, none of your faces. It must be rack-punch.’

Rack-punch was another
Vauxhall tradition, but not as harmless as the rest. Plentiful sugar and lemon
could not mask the leer of potent spirits. The ancient waiter brought them the
bowl leaning backwards, as if hefting a full bath. George’s big-jawed face
beamed through the steam as he stirred.

Lydia had a strong head
for liquor, and took a cup. Even as it went sulphurously down she knew it must
be her last. But it did ignite a final, definitive thought about Bath and Lady
Eastmond’s request. She resisted, she saw now, because she did not wish to be
recruited into a silly and sentimental novel, in which, while sweeping disdainfully
about Bath and advising her innocent young charge against all entanglements,
she was all unconsciously ready to be swept off her feet by imperious Lord
Wideacres who, not put off by her advancing years, was set upon curing her of
her bluestocking ways. Last chapter, double wedding of young charge and mature
bluestocking, both Brought To Self-knowledge by respective spouses.
Bluestocking softened, and reconciled to a lifetime of annual visits to, and
blissful mindless saunterings in, the Pump Room.

Meanwhile George,
affectionate even when sober, drank several cups of the punch, and was soon
heartily shaking Hugh Hanley’s hand and embracing Susannah: an excellent
fellow, never more pleased than running into him tonight: the best of wives,
any man who found even half her equal could count himself the luckiest in
creation, and so on. Lydia’s turn must come. There was music about to begin in
the Rotunda, and she started to mention it, but George’s warm unsteady hand
seized hers.

‘Never mind that,
Lyddie: I know you don’t like to receive compliments, but I am in the chair,
and you must suffer it: you must let me say what I mean, and that is, you are
the best sister a man ever had: and look here, the kindest and warmest
likewise. All head and no heart, some might say — but if they do, they’ll have
me to deal with first, for I know better. All head and no heart? Not Lyddie.
Anyone who says that is only revealing their ignorance. Besides the fact that
I’ll fight them to the death. No, they don’t know Lyddie, if they say she’s all
head and no heart. You have to look beneath.’ Visibly, George entertained a
fleeting idea that he had dropped something, and began perseveringly to look
under the table for it. ‘Never mind what happened to poor old Cribs. I’m sorry
for him, but he wasn’t the right one. Ow. No, there is a right one, and we
simply haven’t found him yet. And he will be a lucky man, because it isn’t true
what they say — all head and no heart. It isn’t.’ George suddenly rose with a
severe, judicial look, and grabbed hold of the table to stop the world
spinning. ‘I think, by the by, I shall go for a walk along the Walks.’

Wanderingly, he went.
Susannah followed, all tolerant fondness of male exuberance. Lydia sat on,
rather more rigid than she wanted to be, reflecting on the way the people
closest to us are able so effortlessly to thrust us to the farthest distance.

‘All head and no heart,’
Lydia repeated. ‘What would you say to that, Mr Hanley?’

‘Oh, lots of things:
because, of course, as you reminded me this evening, there is nothing more
important in the world than talking about
you —
except that at the time
you
was
me.
Or were. This is becoming dismally grammatical.’ He called
for the bill. ‘Shall we go and hear the music?’