Mr Bishop and the Actress (9 page)

‘No, I don’t know how. Aunt Shad tried to teach me, but she had to keep running out to vomit.’

‘What! Your playing was so bad?’

She shakes her head, taking my jest entirely seriously. ‘No, she was with child. Besides, Aunt Shad doesn’t really like to play. She likes horses and babies better.’

‘But you can play?’

‘Oh yes. It’s quite easy.’ She sits at the pianoforte and hums quietly to herself. ‘This is the Sussex Waltz.’

And she plays, quite sweetly and simply, a tune she must have danced to. Her touch is light and delicate, but she has an instinct for when she should play loud or soft. I am charmed and impressed.

‘Where did you hear it?’ I ask when she has finished.

‘Oh, everyone knows this.’ She looks at me with astonishment as though everyone can do what she can.

‘I see. Would you like to sing for me?’

She looks much happier and we browse through the volume of music together to find a song she knows, and naturally it is from Shakespeare, Feste’s song from the conclusion of
Twelfth Night
. I am struck not only by her innocence (it is, after all, a bawdy and vulgar song) but by her pure tone and the way she phrases the words.

‘I know I don’t know very much,’ she says after I have played the last chord.

‘On the contrary, you know much more than you think. I’m afraid you’ll have to learn how to read music but your touch on the instrument is very fine and you sing extremely well.’

‘Oh. Thank you. Do you think I know enough to go on the stage?’

‘I really couldn’t say, Amelia. I don’t think Lord or Lady Shad would wish me to encourage such ambitions. There is a great deal of difference between playing for polite society in a drawing room and performing on a stage with hundreds of people watching, ready to jeer if they do not like what you do, and—’

I stop abruptly. I do not want to reveal my theatrical experience, but I regret it is too late.

‘Indeed?’ She looks thrilled. ‘What must you do on the stage?’

I close the volume of music. ‘You have to make your voice reach the furthest seats in the house. You have to learn to breathe properly and—and, above all remember you are a lady.’

For, yes, as though responding to a prompter, Harry Bishop has entered the room and frowns at us both. ‘Why, just in time!’ I cry. ‘Mr Bishop must partner you. I shall play a country dance and see how your deportment is.’

He bows to Amelia, but not to me. ‘So we should pretend this is an Assembly, Miss Amelia?’

‘Oh, indeed, yes!’ Amelia smiles at him.

‘Lady Shad asked me to send for you, but it is not a pressing matter. Pray instruct your pupil, Mrs Marsden.’

Oh, damn the man again. I have not been to a country assembly in my life. I cannot think of one time where I have danced in polite company. On tables, yes. In taverns. On stages. But at a country assembly?

I recover quickly. ‘The gentleman will ask you to dance, Miss Amelia.’ A fairly logical step, I’d think, but his cynical smile tells me otherwise. ‘He has of course been introduced to us by a mutual acquaintance.’

He bows, she curtsies, and I take my place at the pianoforte, having found a country dance in the music collection, very ill copied (Lady Shad’s, I suspect). I watch Harry and Amelia dance, or rather they play at dancing, sometimes imagining other couples within a set, and parting to take invisible hands or smile at nonexistent companions. It is quite charming and innocent. Harry, slightly uncomfortable at first, takes his part well, encouraged by her ease and happiness – I can tell she is a creature who loves to dance, but what young woman does not? They step and circle, well matched, and my fingers stumble on the keys. I recover from my spurt of wrong notes, and they catch the rhythm again, laughing now, and apparently oblivious to everything except each other.

‘Enough, I think.’ I conclude the dance with a crashing chord. They stop, Harry shaking his head and laughing, and she blushing a little.

‘Why did you stop, Mrs Marsden?’

Why did I stop, indeed? I’m not sure. I don’t altogether approve of what I have just witnessed, although as I tell myself, there has been nothing untoward. Their dance was fanciful but not improper and I cannot tell why it has disturbed me so. I look at Amelia. I do not want to look at Harry.

‘You know well what you are about, Amelia.’ There is a certain shrillness to my tone and she looks at me with surprise. ‘That is to say, your manner is natural and easy and I think you will do well enough at any . . . any . . .’

‘Are you quite well, Mrs Marsden?’ Harry has come to my side.

‘Very well, I assure you. This room is a little close, that is all. Come, Amelia, we must visit Lady Shad, and . . .’ I cannot finish my sentences, apparently, but I take Amelia’s arm and escort her into the morning room, where Lady Shad lounges on the sofa, Harriet at her breast, and her two sons play with a battered set of lead soldiers upon the floor.

‘Amelia is a very talented musician,’ I tell Lady Shad and see Amelia blush with pride.

‘I’ve always thought so, but I can barely tell one tune from another. I find her singing very restful. Shad said we should ask your advice about a new gown for Amelia.’ She pulls a tattered London newspaper from her side. It is some six months old. ‘You know all about London fashions, do you not?’

‘A little.’ To my horror, the newspaper falls open at a sketch of the supremely elegant Mrs Wallace’s new gown.

‘I thought a nice muslin, maybe spotted, or a striped cotton. What say you, Mrs Marsden?’

I remember that gown, palest muslin with a gold net overlay, cut scandalously low with the barest hint of sleeves. Dear Charlie could hardly wait to get it off me.

‘Perhaps the cut of the bosom . . .’ I venture.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Lady Shad glances down at her own generous bosom, enhanced by nursing an infant. ‘We cannot all be so fortunate.’

‘Who is Mrs W—?’ Amelia asks, peering at the sketch. ‘She looks a little like you, Mrs Marsden, except you are much prettier.’

‘She is a lady of a certain reputation, Amelia, and if you understand that and we were in polite society, you would pretend you did not know what I mean.’

Amelia looks rather dumbfounded at Lady Shad’s advice. ‘Why, Aunt Shad?’

‘Mama, we need the newspaper.’ Master George, his face set in a determined frown, sits on the sofa and watches his sister nurse. ‘When will she be big enough to play with me?’

‘Not for a good while yet,’ his mother says, ruffling his hair. ‘What do you need the newspaper for?’

‘It’s complicated,’ the child says.

His mother tears the picture out of the newspaper and hands the rest to her son, who then borrows the scissors from her workbox and joins his brother on the floor again.

‘Amelia, you should go into the village and visit the dressmaker,’ Lady Shad says. ‘Mrs Marsden can advise you on the cloth and cut, for I don’t think Mrs Henney is up on the London fashions, even those from six months ago. We’re invited to Captain and Mrs Carstairs next week and I daresay there’ll be dancing. They’re our neighbours, Mrs Marsden, and she’s quite amiable although he has but one leg and is dreadfully shy. And after that we go to Brighton, for the Beresfords have invited us – he is Shad’s cousin, you know, and Lady Beresford my great friend. Do you know Brighton, Mrs Marsden?’

Brighton! Oh heavens, of course I do. I cannot possibly go there, not even disguised as a frump. What on earth shall I do?

‘George is cutting Simon’s hair again,’ Amelia says. She reaches for the scissors, which George relinquishes after a brief struggle.

Sure enough, his brother’s hair is reduced to tufts, and Simon gives a delighted smile at the attention.

‘You little monsters,’ Lady Shad says with great affection. ‘And when shall you be breeched, George, a great boy like you?’

George sticks his thumb in his mouth and frowns.

‘Very well.’ His mother shrugs. ‘But if you wish to go into the village with the ladies you must wear breeches.’

Both little boys giggle and crowd on to the sofa with their mother and I am charmed with this demonstration of familial affection.

Lord Shad enters the drawing room, a boot in his hand. ‘Which of you fiends pissed in my boot this morning?’ He pounces on George. ‘You? And you’ve cut your brother’s hair again. Ma’am, I’ll be grateful if you do not lend your child your scissors, and pray teach him the difference between a boot and a chamber pot.’

‘Papa, I did it,’ Simon says, and then, ‘George told me to.’

‘A conspiracy! Come with me, both of you.’ He leaves with his sons, who seem quite cheerful and not at all contrite.

‘Oh. He will not beat them?’ Amelia looks mightily distressed.

‘No, he’s too soft-hearted. Doubtless he teaches them a lesson with soap and a brush in the kitchen, and I regret there is nothing they like better than soap bubbles and getting themselves wet. But at least they will be clean for a little while.’ She glances at me. ‘Mrs Marsden, my apologies for our irregular house. Bishop will drive you into the village; I know he has some business to conduct there.’

Diary of Miss Amelia Price

I write this with the greatest of excitement as I have come upstairs to get my spencer as we are to drive into the village where I will get a new gown (!!!), and today I danced with Mr Bishop and he is a very good dancer and I enjoyed it exceedingly. I think Mrs Marsden thought it improper but I am sure if she had she would have said. And tho he danced with me he looked at her quite a lot. And now I must go.

Harry

I am none too pleased at Lady Shad’s command to drive Sophie and Amelia into the village but I am to buy some household goods, tea and sugar, and collect a sack of flour from the mill and can think of no reason why they should not accompany me. The two women spend a vast deal of time getting ready – my mother and sisters are the same – and I stand for a good ten minutes becoming increasingly impatient while the horse dozes.

They appear giggling and both looking remarkably pretty until I remind myself that Amelia is my employer’s ward and Sophie – Mrs Marsden, that is – is a strumpet in the clothing of respectability. As soon as they are in the trap the horse stirs itself, cocks its tail, and deposits a heap of steaming manure on the cobbles of the stableyard. For some reason I am mortified, but not nearly as much as when, but a few minutes later, the horse and I have a struggle of wills as to whether it shall remain on the road or take a turn.

‘His friend lives down there.’

‘His friend, Miss Amelia? How can a horse have a friend?’ I haul at the reins and click my tongue.

‘His friend is a donkey. Would you like me to take the reins, Mr Bishop?’

‘No thank you, ma’am.’ We lurch back on to the road. It is a warm day and if I were alone I would divest myself of my coat, but of course with the two females present it is impossible.

Amelia, seated next to me, rummages in her reticule and produces a piece of newspaper, turning to speak to Sophie who sits behind. I glance idly at the newspaper and drop the whip. ‘Why do you have that?’

‘It’s a picture of a gown,’ Amelia explains. ‘It’s very fashionable.’

‘But it’s—’

‘The notorious Mrs W—’ Sophie murmurs and I glance back. Her face is hidden by the brim of her bonnet yet I could swear she laughs at me.

I scrabble to retrieve the whip from the floor of the cart and place it in the holder where it can do no harm, considering I shall not need it again until our return journey when doubtless the horse will again wish to pay a morning call. I have learned to ride and drive from necessity, not as a right from birth, or from being reared in the country.

This is my first visit to the village, where a venerable oak spreads its branches over a few boys playing ball on the green and a collection of ducks swimming in a small, muddy pond. I have no doubt Amelia casts a professional eye upon them. I let the two ladies down at a shop with a window full of bonnets and fabrics, whose sign proclaims it to be the establishment of one Mrs Henney, and spend some time at the grocer’s in the village, where I am treated with much deference before the owner launches into a torrent of praise for the departed Mr Roberts, my predecessor.

After a brief struggle with the horse, who has decided we should return home immediately, I return to the dressmaker’s. The bell clangs as I enter female territory and I am reminded of the tedium and mystery of visiting such establishments with my sisters and mother. Amelia and Sophie pore over piles of fabric and trims at the counter.

A soft stream of chatter comes from Mrs Henney. ‘. . . and born not six months after the wedding, and a fine lusty child he is, but he has bright red hair. Well. I am sure I need say no more. Now I did hear also that the serving maid at the vicar’s has gone to visit her mother and she had grown very stout these last few weeks; of course I am not the gossiping sort, but . . .’

‘Mr Bishop!’ cries Amelia, having looked up at the jangle of the bell, and, blinking, recognized me. ‘You must help us decide. Pale blue or cream? I am afraid if I choose the cream, my gloves will not match for I am sure they will look dingy. Or the pink, do you think?’

‘Oh, the pink, most definitely.’ Frankly I have no idea, but it is obvious a firm masculine sensibility is needed here.

‘Pink?’ She turns to Sophie. ‘Oh. But I thought you said—’

‘So I did. Take no notice of Mr Bishop. His response was merely to get us out of the door and himself out of this distressingly feminine atmosphere. He has not even looked at the fabrics. No, I stand by the blue. Mrs Henney, I am sure you can use some leftover fabric to fashion a bandeau for Miss Amelia . . .’ and they are off again.

Mrs Henney drops me a curtsy and offers me tea while the ladies’ business continues. It seems they are coming to a conclusion, although the mention of the bandeau creates some time-consuming excursions into consideration of various silk flowers, of which Mrs Henney possesses an alarming quantity.

‘But what shall you wear, Mrs Marsden?’ Amelia cries and I groan, probably silently, fearing the whole process will start all over again.