Habits of the House (24 page)

‘And I so seldom see you with your hair down. It is most attractive. Shall I eschew my dressing room for the night?’

‘Yes,’ said his wife, agreeably. So far as she was concerned sharing the marital bed was the point of the marriage. She had married for love, and the satisfaction of desire, and though she could see money had been a factor for him, and that love and desire had come later, at least it had quickly followed. Isobel felt the familiar surge of rosy pleasure through her limbs, and felt grateful to her Maker.

‘One thing,’ said Robert, ‘about Mrs Baum.’

‘Mrs Baum? Oh.’ Isobel could see things were not going to be as simple as she had hoped. Something was to be required of her. ‘I was going to invite her, was I not, at your request? I didn’t exactly forget, Robert, but one rather resists this sort of thing. Since Melinda and Arthur are getting on so well, the reason to appease Mr and Mrs Baum seems to have rather gone. It is never such a good idea to mix business with one’s social life, you know, if it is not absolutely required.’

‘The urgency is still there, my dear,’ said her husband. ‘I would have informed you if it were not. Indeed, it is rather more necessary than before. The idea now is not so much
escaping penury as acquiring wealth. It is an excellent aim. Our children may then make a free choice in their marriages. If Arthur decides Minnie O’Brien is not for him, we need not despair. If Rosina prefers never to marry, she need not.’

‘The price of this is asking Mrs Baum to a Charity Tea? Very well, if you insist. I dare say she is a perfectly pleasant woman. She is welcome to sip my sherry and donate to a good cause.’

‘No. More than that, my dear. She and Mr Baum must be invited to a dinner at which the Prince is present.’

The rosy warmth drained rather from Lady Isobel’s limbs. She even shivered a little.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Just to think of the royal dinner is exhausting. The O’Briens are bad enough. But the Baums? Why? They will hardly be socially at ease. I feel for them, as much as for my guests. The Jews don’t eat shellfish. I will not be able to serve lobster, which is such a favourite with so many, or scalloped oysters, which is usually done at this time of year. And I believe pork too. So even roast suckling pig, which is the Prince’s favourite, is out of the question.’

‘The Prince dines frequently with the Rothschilds, and I have never heard him complain about the menu,’ said her husband. ‘More, Ernest Cassel is his good friend, and decorated by her Majesty—’

‘You mean Cassel lends the Prince money, which he then gambles away, and the Prince has worn down the poor Queen, so this vulgar financier, who may be very clever but comes from nowhere, and has no loyalty whatsoever to this country, from some wandering tribe, receives a KCMG from her in return? You are in unholy waters, my dear. You’re too simple. Mr Kruger of the Boers, according to
The Times
, would have it that the Rothschilds were behind the Jamestown Raid, from
whence our own personal losses at Ladysmith originated. They care nothing for patriotism, only for personal gain. Whatever you are doing, be careful.’

‘It is bad for a lady’s looks to read the newspapers so closely,’ said Robert. He had not expected quite so much opposition to a simple request.

‘Besides,’ said her Ladyship, rather feebly, so he knew he was winning the argument, and her arguments more to do with the dinner menu than any serious principle, ‘I have seldom seen Cassel at Princess Alexandra’s table.’

‘Because poor Alexandra is deaf,’ said Robert, ‘and became so within three years of the marriage, to the Prince’s very great distress.’

‘Ernest Cassel is a Catholic,’ said his wife. ‘Don’t they owe more loyalty to the Pope in Rome than to their own country? And one tries not to have Catholics to dinner on a Friday, because of the lack of a meat course. All one can do for them is serve stewed pigeons, which unaccountably are treated as fish, but are never Cook’s forte. Freddie’s cook manages pigeon well enough, but her beef is never right. I am sure dear Freddie is trying to poach her. Well, well, then I will do what I can. We will ask them for the seventeenth, and the Prince will have to put up with both the Baums and the O’Briens. I really hope Rosina consents to be present and doesn’t find a meeting she has to go to. The Prince likes Rosina.’

She had capitulated. Isobel too, Robert had no doubt, could see the benefit in any plan which would increase the family’s future prosperity. She was her father’s daughter. He moved his hand round her back beneath the silk wrap and felt her body move into his.

Tessa Too Lets a Cat Out of the Bag

7 p.m. Saturday, 18th November 1899

When Minnie returned to the hotel from her horse riding jaunt with Arthur she found Grace bathing her mother’s feet in a most elegant blue and white footbath.

‘Epsom salts,’ said her mother. ‘What they use over here for feet. My, what a day we had. Poor Grace got quite soaked. We went shopping down Bond Street.’

‘Did you get a present for Father?’ asked Minnie. ‘He’ll be missing us.’

‘He’ll be making do on his own, I don’t doubt,’ said Tessa. ‘I wouldn’t worry about him. I nearly bought him a nice pocket watch but he’ll never give up his old railroad watch. How was your day?’

‘I had a good gallop,’ said Minnie, ‘and Arthur forgave me for it, though he still thinks it is unladylike.’

‘You are very bad, Minnie. You only do it to annoy. I thought you quite liked this young man.’

‘Oh I do,’ said Minnie, ‘I do declare I am almost in love with him. I took good care not to make jokes or say anything sensible. That must mean something.’

‘While your mother’s feet soak, Miss Minnie,’ said Grace, ‘may I run you a bath?’

Her tone had quite changed. It was friendly, even concerned. Minnie wondered why.

‘Grace has forgiven us,’ her mother said, unasked. ‘She now sees you’re natural born gentry, even if I’m not, and a fit wife for the Earl of Dilberne, so she’s prepared to be nice to us.’

Grace gasped and scarcely knew where to look.

‘Isn’t that a fact, Grace?’ persisted Tessa. ‘See, I can read your mind.’

‘I am no different this evening than I was this morning,’ observed Minnie, ‘whatever happened during your day.’

‘But she is, isn’t she?’ said her mother to Grace, and then, turning to Minnie, said, ‘We visited the Royal Academy of Arts and saw a portrait of your real father, Mr Eyre Crowe. Holy Mary Mother of God, Minnie, you’re the spitting image of him, same eyes, same nose, I’d put my life on it. Isn’t that a fact, Grace? You saw it for yourself.’

‘Oh please, Mrs O’Brien,’ said Grace, in a voice more high-pitched than usual. ‘I saw nothing of the kind, Miss Minnie. Believe me. Just a blotchy portrait of a bearded man. I don’t know nothing about art. I’m just the lady’s maid. Mrs O’Brien, I’d be obliged if you’d just let Miss Minnie get out of these dirty clothes and on with her bath. We want her to look nice for dinner tonight. It is only an hotel dinner but even so.’

Minnie went quietly with Grace into the bathroom and took her bath. Grace helped Minnie out of her riding clothes. Minnie, accustomed to black servants, was disconcerted to find herself standing nude in front of a white woman, but thought she had better get used to it, though in truth her early experiences in a convent had marked her more than she would acknowledge. She felt a little stunned and dizzy, as if her mother had hurled a baseball at her head and she hadn’t got out of the way in time. What had Tessa just said? Her ‘real father’?

Tessa had made hints through Minnie’s childhood, especially when Billy failed to use a spittoon or sneezed into
his soup, and annoyed her, that Minnie was not her father’s child and thanked the Lord for it, but since Billy had always laughed it off, and given Tessa a cuddle, and told his wife to cut out giving herself airs, Minnie had assumed the claim to be just another of Tessa’s passing follies. She knew the name Eyre Crowe. She had seen his painting in the Institute of Arts back home often enough. His name was engraved on the little brass plate beneath a painting of a group of clean and healthy girls waiting on a bench for the slave auction. All that slavery was over now, though freedom hadn’t seemed to do the Negroes much good. She couldn’t see that the squalor, filth and cold of the cattle yards was much of an improvement on the cotton fields. It didn’t bear thinking about too much, any more than that she wasn’t her father’s daughter, which, frankly, if true, and she would not be surprised if it were, was rather a relief.

Billy was a good-hearted, jovial, generous, noisy, tolerant man, who did good in the community, ate enormously, broke wind frequently, was kind to cattle while they waited for slaughter, and never flaunted any mistresses in front of his wife. Billy and Tessa were two of a kind and, however fond she was of them, not her kind. No, she could accept her illegitimacy, or whatever it was, well enough. She’d just had to readjust her vision of herself rather quickly: Miss Melinda O’Brien – affianced, if secretly, to Arthur, Earl-in-waiting of Dilberne. Billy was, she could see, not the best father-in-law for Arthur, but probably preferable to have in his life than a mother-inlaw who had borne his wife outside the marriage bed. She must persuade her mother to stay quiet about Eyre Crowe, simply forget him, as she herself would. Was he still alive? It was possible, although one always assumed those who had paintings in gold frames in State museums were of the past. If
so, it might complicate matters. She could live very well as Viscountess Hedleigh, the O’Brien girl. But Viscountess Hedleigh the Eyre Crowe girl? She did not want to lose Arthur. She was reeling him in as a fisherman does a salmon. He was tugging away at the line at the moment; the last thing she wanted was to have it snagged and snapped on unexpected rocks before she could pull him in. Arthur must get no hint of this development. Her mother must simply forget she had ever set eyes on a portrait of Eyre Crowe. So must Grace. Then everything would be as it had been. She stepped out of the bath clean, warm, rosy and composed.

Fortunately Grace had come to the same conclusion. ‘I brought out the brown creased-silk with the low neck for Miss Minnie,’ said Grace to Tessa, tenderly drying her new mistress’s feet. The swelling had gone down; the gold kid shoes would fit by the time she was ready for dinner. The shoes had cost as much as she, Grace, earned in a year. There must be some other way of living in which the harder you worked, the more money you earned.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need
. It was a fine sentiment, but more a statement of hope than a declaration of intent. ‘Miss Minnie can wear it with the pearls. Very simple and nice, suitable for a young girl.’

‘Snakes alive, Grace,’ said Tessa O’Brien, ‘are you trying to turn my girl into a frump? That dress does nothing for her at all.’

‘It’s discreet and ladylike, Mrs O’Brien, and that’s what we want for her at the moment. May I offer you a word of advice?’

‘Advise away, Grace,’ said Tessa. ‘There’s no stopping you anyway.’

‘Silence is the best policy,’ said Grace. ‘Truth is too
dangerous. Miss Minnie is as pure as the driven snow, born in wedlock, and legal heir to your husband’s fortune.’

‘You’re a good woman, Grace,’ said Tessa. ‘But what a world of lies this is!’

‘It’s how we all survive,’ observed Grace.

Rosina Spills the Beans to Minnie

10.30 a.m. Sunday, 19th November 1899

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.’