Life Mask (37 page)

Park Place was somnolent in August. Anne read her mother Brace's
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile.
She hadn't gone abroad in almost two years. Her health was pretty sound, considering, but there was always the danger that if she stayed in England right through another winter her lungs might succumb. Perhaps she should consult Dr Fordyce?

Gazing out through the rain-striped window, she let her eyes unfocus. Later she should stir herself and go for a walk. She would have to stop avoiding the routes she had taken with Eliza Farren on that visit to Park Place three summers ago. It was one thing to be a woman of sensibility and another to be prey to every passing emotion, every upsetting memory.

She slept in her old room. The familiar walls, hung with faded prints on ribbons, linked by stencilled outlines, gave her the vertiginous feeling that the last thirty years hadn't happened. She'd never been married, never widowed, never set up housekeeping on her own, made her own friends, carved out a place in the world. Anne was the Countess's girl again, a maker of light conversation, a holder of coloured worsteds, a fourth at cribbage.

Her note must have sounded rather desperate, because it brought Walpole down within the week. 'I'm so very grateful,' she told him again, under parasols on the terrace. 'The other day I was telling the maid how to clean the bust I brought down after the Exhibition and you know what Mother said?
It will do nicely for my tomb.'

Walpole grimaced. 'It's a strange thing that solitude and reflection—which are often the best medicines for strong characters like yours and mine—only make Lady Ailesbury worse.'

'Yes, she starves for congenial company. And Father's overjoyed you're here too, of course,' Anne added. 'He says it's too long since Horry and Harry rambled through the woods together.' Here she was exaggerating, because the Field Marshal, busy with improvements to his lavender still, had greeted his cousin with an absent-minded handshake.

Walpole considered his swollen foot. 'I'm not sure I'm up to
rambling..'.

'Oh, I meant it figuratively. The footmen could carry you in your chair.'

'It's been a melancholy summer, then?'

She knew he was thinking of the actress; his pouched eyes rested on her tenderly. 'Well.
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
as the saying goes.'

'Now I myself have had the great good fortune, in my seventy-third year, to make the friendship of a whole family,' said Walpole.

Anne arranged her face pleasantly, but she could tell what was to come: gloating about the Berrys. They were his latest craze, more preoccupying—but mercifully cheaper—than china, painted glass, or the hair of dead kings.

Mr Robert Berry, a widower in humble circumstances with two daughters, had taken a house on Twickenham Common. 'They come to me every Sunday evening for conversation. They're not of the World, to be sure, but Mr Berry is indubitably a gentleman. It's a tragic story, stop me if I've told you before...'

What a shock he'd get if I did,
Anne thought.

'Berry's a smiling fellow, never says a word—but must be counted a hero in his own way; he met a woman with no fortune and married her for love. Well, the uncle was incensed, cut him off without a penny,' said Walpole with a storyteller's relish. 'The impoverished beauty died, as an evil fate would have it; the widower cherished her memory and nobly refused his uncle's command to make a second marriage. So the brother got the uncle's whole fortune instead, and grudgingly tossed Berry and his girls an allowance of a mere £800 a year, only to avoid the censure of the neighbours!'

Anne felt a small pang of sympathy at this point; that was less than a sixth of her own income and she had no dependants.

He was on to the Misses Berry now. 'Such sensibility and such wit,' he crowed. 'Miss Mary has the face of a heroine in a sentimental novel, but none of the foolishness. I've found out, quite by chance, that she's a perfect Frenchwoman and a Latinist besides, with a very penetrating intelligence for one so young. In fact, she reminds me of no one so much as you, Anne.'

She gave the appropriate smile. Was she being replaced?

'Miss Agnes is clever too, in a milder style, and works, wonders with her pencil. Really, they're the most accomplished and agreeable young creatures I ever met. Entirely natural and unaffected, too. They're two pearls, don't you see, that I found in my path.'

'You're a born collector,' she teased him. They sounded like pert little horrors to her. It was the story of those milkmaid poetesses all over again; would the Berrys' talents earn so much praise if the girls weren't so poor? 'Tell me,' she went on slyly, 'if Miss Berry—the elder—is so very beautiful, how is she still unmarried past twenty-five?'

Walpole's little eyes blinked. 'Why, my dear, she's devoted to her family.'

'Mightn't she have served them better by finding a rich husband who could offer them all a home?'

'I—now you ask, I hardly know how to answer you. I don't know whether she's had proposals; they live very quietly. Perhaps her brilliance intimidates young men,' he suggested uneasily.

Stop it
, Anne told herself. Poor Miss Berry was probably a harmless country spinster with a mole on her nose. Anne was behaving like some jealous widow. All this gushing on Walpole's part was reminding her of the era when every letter of his had contained some high-pitched reference to his goddaughter's
extraordinary talents
and
luminous graces.
But she could hardly expect to be anybody's protégée any more; she was past forty.

His trembling fingers were shuffling through his watered silk pocketbook. 'Here's one of her verses in response to mine, I had Kirgate print it up on the press at Strawberry Hill.'

Anne accepted the paper.

Far in a wood, not much exposed to view,
With other forest fruit two Berries grew...

Her eyes skipped down the lines. Here came
a wandering sage—
Walpole, of course—who tasted the fruit and sang its glories.

The Berries, conscious all this sudden Name
Proved not their value, but their Patron's fame—
Conscious they only could aspire to please
Some simple Palates satisfied with ease...

'Isn't that charming, the final couplet?' asked Walpole, tapping the paper with a knob-knuckled finger.

...No greater honours anxious to obtain,
But still your favourite Berries to remain.

'Charming,' she echoed, but privately she thought
coy stuff.
He struck. 'So may I introduce them, when you come at the end of the month?'

'Am I coming at the end of the month?'

'Evidently, my dear, since that's when you're to meet the Berrys.'

Anne laughed in capitulation.

T
HE HOUSEKEEPER
at Strawberry Hill, Margaret Young, led her through the star chamber to the long gallery, wheezing a little. Anne hadn't been in the gallery for some time; the crimson damask walls, mirrored recesses and tables of ancient busts made her smile. Faustina, Julia Maesa, Zenocrates, Domitilla, Antonia Claudii Mater ... These inscriptions had been her nursery rhymes.

'We spied your carriage through the windows,' cried Walpole, beckoning her over to his chaise to be kissed. 'Oh, splendid, you've brought Fidelle; Tonton's been so looking forward to playing with her.'

'Hunting her like a rabbit, you mean,' she said, keeping the little greyhound safe in her arms as the black spaniel ran and yapped at Anne's silk skirts.

Walpole let out a titter and the middle-aged man beside him joined in. The girls were wearing white chemise gowns with broad matching hats and blue ribbons; they were clearly aiming for a rural look, with no pretensions to elegance, Anne thought during the introductions and handshakes.

'I was just explaining about the ceiling,' said Walpole, craning up so his Adam's apple bulged in the folds of his throat. 'It's an exact copy of the fan vaulting from Henry VII's chapel, Miss Agnes, except not in heavy stone or plaster, but in papier mâché—to my mind the most marvellous of modern discoveries.'

'What about electricity, or balloon flight,' Anne teased him, 'or false teeth?'

'The first two are mere games,' he scoffed, 'and a man who cleans his teeth will never lose them'—baring his own in a grin.

Miss Agnes mentioned that she should like to draw the vaulting. 'My sister is learning perspective,' Miss Berry told Anne. She was a little bird of a thing, with dark eyes and a surprisingly deep voice with a trace of Yorkshire in it.

'And a marvellous thing too,' cried Walpole, 'since young ladies can never have too many inner resources.'

'They're more necessary to our sex than weapons to yours,' said Miss Berry.

'But so many of our ranks seem to get by on cards and scandal,' Anne remarked lightly.

'Two things my sister and I despise.'

Anne felt rather rebuffed. She hoped the Misses Berry wouldn't prove to be stern Evangelicals, like that ghastly Hannah More; Walpole's taste for female company was sometimes really too broad.

Mrs Young came in with a footman staggering under the weight of a great tea kettle and she lit the spirit lamp. While they were waiting for the water to boil, Anne decided that the father was a mute, round-faced puppet. He'd been trained to the law but never practised it, she learned, and she could see why. Agnes Berry had a sensible, composed face and dainty movements, but less conversation than her sister.

After tea they went walking in the grounds, which were looking. rather overgrown and shabby, but still charming; Walpole had a passion for trees and let them spread wherever they liked. Wild strawberries poked up through the grass. Anne went in pursuit of Fidelle, through the avenue of lime trees by the Thames. She heard steps behind her and the elder girl caught her up. 'You must loathe us, Mrs Damer,' she said rather breathlessly.

Anne stared.

The little creature wasn't scared off. 'Mr Walpole has been kind enough to praise us so excessively—both to our faces and, I know, in his correspondence—that you must wonder what he sees in a very ordinary family.'

'Fidelle,' cried Anne, clapping her hands, playing for time. 'Are you fishing for a compliment, Miss Berry?'

'Not at all.' The fine brown eyes met Anne's.

The same colour as mine, but several shades darker. A much neater face; symmetry, that's the first principle of beauty. Pallor; has she a bronchial constitution? It undercuts the sweetness of the features, makes them more interesting.
'Wouldn't you agree, then,' she went on, deadpan, 'that as my cousin devotes the greatest part of his praises to your beauty in particular, and your brilliance, that most of my putative loathing for your family should be yours too?'

'I suppose it should.'

Anne dissolved into a soft laugh. 'I'm glad we've settled that.' The tiny dog raced out of a bush, yipping with excitement, and stood on two legs to claw at Miss Berry's white skirts. 'Fidelle, stop it—' Oh, no, the dog had attached herself to the girl's shin and was humping it unmistakably. Anne ran over. 'Miss Berry, I'm truly mortified. She almost never—Fidelle!'

The girl had already bent and wrapped the dog up in her arms. 'No need to apologise. They crave affection; don't we all?'

Well, not so Evangelical after all.
'You're very kind,' said Anne foolishly.

The dog twisted and whimpered with pleasure. 'What a lean little dancer! She's all muscle, isn't she,' said Miss Berry, her cheek against Fidelle's coat, 'and such an elegant, cool little nose. I've never seen an Italian greyhound this silvery colour. Is that a break in her tail, where it curls up?'

Observant, too.
'Yes, they're often damaged during birth. Fidelle's usually shy with strangers, but she's taken to you at once.'

'We used to have a dog,' said Mary Berry, her voice painful.

They were walking side by side now, along the river bank. 'Are you interested in horticulture?'

'I expect I would be, if I'd ever had a settled home,' said the young woman, setting Fidelle down and picking up a fat acorn. 'Some of the houses we've rented have had gardens, but it hardly seems worthwhile planting a tree if you don't expect to taste its fruit.'

'Well put,' said Anne. 'I grow some vegetables at the back of my house in Grosvenor Square, but I don't take any trouble with flowers.'

'You have your art,' the girl reminded her. 'Why cultivate a transient bloom when you can carve an immortal one?'

Anne's mouth twisted with amusement. 'I'm not sure I've ever carved a flower, now I come to think of it. Some laurel wreaths, that's all. You'd be surprised to learn what a filthy, tiring pastime sculpture is.'

'More than a pastime, surely?'

'Well, yes, I think of it as my profession, but I'm not sure the members of the Royal Academy would agree. My status there is
Honorary Exhibitor,:'

'I should have thought what mattered was your status not in their eyes but in posterity's,' said Mary Berry.

Anne smiled again. 'The young are always so idealistic.'

'Rather, I've so little opinion of this life that I take a longer view, trusting to posterity to make up some losses,' said the girl darkly. Anne looked at her sideways. 'I've never felt young. I consider this existence—what's Hobbes's phrase?—nasty, brutish and short. Are you appalled?'

'Intrigued, rather,' Anne told her. 'My cousin Walpole said nothing about your saturnine philosophy.'

'I don't believe I've ever shared it with him.'

Anne was aware of a small surge of pleasure. 'Why not?'

The girl shrugged. 'It's not a matter of hypocrisy, but of adapting the conversation to the listener. Mr Walpole likes me to sparkle, so I do my best; he says glumness is only suited to old curmudgeons. Whereas you, Mrs Damer—'