The Bohemian Girl (16 page)

Diana, walking along and carrying a parcel, had called up to Kitty sitting in her borrowed landau with a hat-box at her feet. Kity had looked at her, turned aside, and spoken to her son, Diana’s eldest nephew. He had been sitting in the corner with his back to the horses, complaining loudly about the treat of being taken out in Mamma’s carriage.

Diana had laughed. ‘Do call on us in Mornington Terrace, Kitty – we shall be moving there pretty shortly, you know. Come and see your Aunt Diana, Frankie!’

She had attracted attention, one man had recognised her, and it had been one of the finest moments of her life. Diana closed her eyes now, and remembered swaggering down to Piccadilly Circus with her brown-paper parcel in her arms. It had been delightful to be young and notorious, yet protected, full of virtue unrecognised by the world.

Looking once more at the charcoal portrait, Diana let a few angry tears fall out of her eyes. Soon, she hoped, she would have a baby. She wanted a girl, and she would call her Alice, after Alice in Wonderland and Alice Bateman, her nurse: who now no longer remembered her birthdays.

*

That evening, Michael returned from some race Diana had
never heard of, and threw a wallet of gold sovereigns into her lap. He also presented her with a necklace made of delicate links, from which hung silver-framed moonstones the colour of unthreatening summer cloud.

‘Michael!’

‘I backed the first outsider whose name I liked and it won by a head. Fifty to one, Diana!’ Michael looked like a boy reciting poems as he said this.

‘How much did you stake? What was the horse’s name?’ she said, handling the necklace, which could not be worth more than thirty shillings, but which she thought the prettiest she had ever seen.

‘Wearer of the Green, is the answer to your last question.’

‘Of course!’ She laughed, and after a pause said: ‘Goodness, what a lot of money. Darling, how much
did
you stake?’

‘Ten quid merely, my dear Diana.’

‘Michael, promise me …’

His sudden frown came down on his face. ‘Never to gamble and game again, is it? My lady Blentham’s warnings and the Reverend Roderick’s sermons again, is it?’

‘Oh, don’t be so unfair. I just want you to promise never to bet more than ten pounds – if we can afford it.’

‘I’ll promise,’ he said, picking up his wallet and throwing the coins at her one by one, glowering all the while. ‘Now, have I been extravagant, Diana? Have I wasted the ready? Are we going to end in the workhouse, then?’

‘Just when I was a trifle worried about the bill for bedroom china,’ said Diana, fending them off. ‘Do you know, a man, a dun, came round the other day and was quite rude to me?’

‘Was he, by God!’ said Michael, looking rather like Lord Blentham.

‘I saw him off, Michael, but it was rather unpleasant,’ she told him.

‘There’s my brave girl,’ he said, squeezing her shoulder. ‘But it won’t happen again, that I promise.’

‘Oh well, it happens a good deal, to people like us, doesn’t it?’

‘I won’t have tradesmen importuning you with their rubbish,’ said Michael with his hands in his pockets. Diana
smiled, but he ignored it. ‘They’re to come straight to me – when they’ve anything to complain of, which won’t be often. I’ll tell the girl. Or whoever we have in her place. Yes, I don’t want a char,’ said Michael.

Quite suddenly Diana suffered one of her rare panics, which would spin her for a few unreal moments round the pivot called
but
this
is
for
life.

Michael saw her dead expression, and took her in his arms. ‘Come, I want to take you to bed – don’t take off that necklace. Ah, I knew how well it would suit you.’ He kissed her until lust overcame her, and then said: ‘Ah, passion’s the thing, damn you.’

When they had made love, and eaten the cook-general’s liver and bacon, Diana drew the curtains in the sitting-room, and showed her husband Cornwallis’s letter. Michael tore it up after one reading, then pieced it together like a jig-saw on the table. He examined it, while Diana stroked the cat and looked at the crowded bookshelves in the space between the windows. Next week they were to give their first party, to several of Michael’s friends whom she did not know very well, and she wondered whether to ask Cornwallis.

He would find this house amusing, for Diana thought most of its interior falsely artistic, rather old-fashioned, and even faintly vulgar. The previous owner had put up a dado of tulips, and wallpaper designed by Morris, and the fireplace was made of black iron and lined with china tiles. The Molloys had bought little furniture so far, and in this sitting-room their few pieces looked over-important, set against the dark patches on the blue carpet and the wallpaper where once there had been low bamboo stands, pictures and Japanese fans. The chairs, table and tallboy they had bought were all Queen Anne, like the Cornwallises’, but they were scuffed, country-made pieces of furniture, not good of their kind. Diana was determined to imitate nobody, though she knew that conscious originality was to be despised. She had put some large cushions down on the floor for comfort and economy’s sake, and this was an arrangement she had never seen before.

She sighed, then suddenly remembered that Michael had been angry enough with Cornwallis to tear the letter up. Yet she had quite forgotten him. She felt frivolous, and too young.

‘Intolerable,’ said Michael.

Diana got up from her cushion. ‘I know,’ she said, fingering her new necklace. ‘But do you think – possibly – there’s another side to the case?’ She put her arm round him, and waited.

‘Oh, I know he means well! But he knows nothing – nothing about us, you may be sure – it’s clear he didn’t even expect you to show this to me.’

‘No, I don’t think he did.’

‘Expected you to be a cunning little wife and use your wiles to get your own way, damn him. And I’m painting no more flash portraits of anyone, not now I’ve got you. I’m obliged to him for all he’s done for me, putting me in Mrs Wilder’s way, and others’, but from now on I’m not footling around, Diana. Oh, I’ll support you, and I won’t quarrel with Cornwallis because I can’t damn well afford to, but I’ll ask him please to recommend me as a drawing-master to young ladies of his acquaintance. That’s how I’ll earn enough.’

‘But dear one – Fierce Fenian Seducer –’ Diana said, ‘just think. Your marriage to me has put that quite out of the question, beyond the pale. Do remember!’

‘Under a false name, I mean,’ said Michael, who failed to laugh at the oddest moments. He was scowling now.

‘Oh, darling! Yes, Arthur might be amused – why not? Oh, it
would
be amusing. And you’d be so good.’ She watched him.

‘Would it, indeed? I suppose so. Oh, you have a sense of humour, Diana, a neat little English girl’s sense of
the
amusing
.’ He looked at her with his mouth twisted, making Diana love him as though he were a child. He was remembering the suit of Rational Dress which he had once sent her. ‘Raphael Macallan from Glasgow, that’s who I’ll be – Digby will be able to recommend a Scottish school for me to have gone to – no, no, it will be better to stick to Paris and M. Clement’s atelier, won’t it? That should impress the ladies, indeed. A grain of truth strengthens any lie you please, as my
uncle who was hanged was used to say to me. Ah, Diana.’

Diana’s slight anxiety vanished. Michael took hold of her shoulders, and she noticed for the hundredth time how unusually pale he was and how, when he flushed, the colour took only on his jawbone and round his eyes. ‘Diana, I’m going to be a great painter, if it’s at all within my power. I’m not wasting any energy on rubbish fools will think grand.’ He paused. ‘I believe you have the power to make me one – to save me from bloody mediocrity. Look at that picture of you, upstairs!’

‘It’s good, Michael.’ She looked down at his waistcoat.

At that moment, the maid came in, snuffling and holding a letter on a tray. ‘This came for yer by the afternoon post, mum – I forgot it.’

‘Thank you, Eliza!’ said Diana crossly. The handwriting was Lady Blentham’s: Diana put it in her pocket before Michael could say anything. With her heart beating fast, she told him: ‘We’ll be happy – so much happier than others – even when we cease to be passionate as all married people do – because we have no
illusions,
even though we’re in love.’

He said: ‘My noble wife,’ and he vowed not to bet, drink, or run up debts, and never to hit Diana in one of the hot little quarrels which they so much enjoyed. She was so very beautiful, and cleverer than he was, and the most truly sexual woman he had ever known. ‘I’m not good enough for you but I’ll make you good enough for
me
.’

He compared Diana daily with his dead mother who had adored him, with his loud father, and with his skinny sister, Eileen: but he did not talk to his wife about his family, it was as though that would be to contaminate her when she loved him for himself alone.

Eileen had regarded him as an immoral person and one to be despised ever since their father, whose favourite she was, had been able to send her as a day-girl to the local convent school of the Sacred Heart. His father, who had taught him to read, write and keep double-entry books, had considered Michael too sinful and shrewd to benefit from a religious education. Michael thought himself sinful, but in the grand manner.

The Blenthams and Montroses gradually mended their quarrel over Diana’s marriage, and who was responsible for what, in a series of letters and meetings in London. For a long time they did not go to each others’ houses except for parties, but met privately at Gunters’ and the Ritz, in Brooks’s and at the House of Lords.

It was not until November 1897 that all except Kitty gathered together at Dunstanton. They meant to assure themselves and each other that the matter was closed, and also to reassign small portions of blame. Then they would be a good family once more: for the public scandal had long since faded, and Diana was forgotten.

On the day the Montroses were coming down to Kent, Maud found an announcement on the front page of
The
Times,
and read it out to her parents after breakfast. Diana had had a daughter without any of them knowing.

Late that afternoon, when Violet and Walter were newly arrived, and were seated with the others at the end of the Long Gallery, Maud came in with the paper in her hand. She held it up to her spectacles, as Violet continued to chat about London and the trains from Scotland.

‘I just went out to fetch this … please listen.’ They were all silent, and her parents and her brothers stirred their tea. ‘“To Diana, wife of Michael Molloy, a daughter, Alice Maria.” Isn’t it most interesting news? I had an idea that it was rather vulgar to put one’s child’s name in the announcement,’ she said, which showed she was not as dull as her family thought her. ‘At least, at one time I thought it was rather democratic.’

‘Very well, Maud, you’ve read it out once, twice is quite
beyond the call of duty,’ said Lord Blentham, getting up. ‘I imagine Violet and Walter have already seen it.’

‘I’m sorry, Papa. But we knew, of course, didn’t we, Mamma?’ said Maud. ‘Diana did drop us a line about it, before.’

Violet looked about her, and stroked her sables. Her husband was now gently snoring in the armchair nearest the fire. ‘Really? How awfully odd. She wrote to me – quite a long letter – and said she was hoping for a girl, so I’m awfully pleased, because actually we didn’t see the notice – but I thought she told me she wanted it to be a surprise for the rest of you. Sorry!’

‘What a deuced bad moment,’ mumbled Sir Walter.

‘Maud is telling an untruth,’ said Angelina. ‘We’ve had no communication from Diana. Naturally I intend to go up to London to see her, now, in view of this.’ She did not say when.

Roderick swallowed some tea. ‘You would do well to take plenty of cash, Mater. I fancy that Irish bounder of hers is pretty deeply in debt. You know, I went to call on her as soon as I had her address – I was very glad to be able to lend her a few guineas.’

‘Thank you, Roderick,’ said his mother.

‘You’ll give her very little besides advice, if you take my advice, Angelina,’ said Lord Blentham. ‘I told her we would do nothing for her, and … I’ll take care of matters as they ought to be taken care of.’

‘There is the child now, Charles,’ said his wife.

‘Yes, there’s the child, Angelina, I know,’ he said. ‘Alice, indeed! I had a pointer bitch called Alice once – but it’s rather an unsuitable name for a child, in my opinion, though I did once hear some old lady or other say it was a very good sort of name for a maid. Together with Ellen, and Jane, and Dolly, and Cora,’ he said, and smiled. He looked very old and ill, though he had made a marvellous recovery from a stroke the previous winter; and he very seldom smiled. ‘I have no intention of visiting Diana yet – I see she means to have us all under her thumb pretty soon.’

*

Alice Molloy was a seven-pound baby, whose aged face looked just like her father’s an hour after birth, and like a black-haired Diana two weeks later.

‘I’m going to get myself knighted before it’s time for her to be presented at Court,’ Michael said.

‘Oh, Fierce Fenian,’ said Diana.

He lowered his eyebrows. ‘That’ll be no bar by the time she’s eighteen or so. The world will have changed a great deal by then, you wait and see.’

‘Oh, I wonder,’ said Diana. ‘Anyway, I have no intention of presenting her, and dragging her through all those terrible parties one has to endure when one’s young. And besides, why on earth do you want
your
daughter to be presented to the English sovereign, Michael?’

‘Oh, I’d like her to catch a glimpse of Ireland’s oppressors at home.’

‘You are ridiculous. And you’ve been drinking,’ said Diana, sitting up in bed.

‘And so why not? I’ve something to celebrate.’ He took hold of Alice, who was sleeping on Diana’s lap, and cooed at her. She woke, screamed, and was quietened by his putting his finger in her mouth. ‘I’ve found a nurse for her, Diana.’

‘A nurse?’

‘Didn’t I tell you I’d keep you properly? I made up my mind long ago that a nurse you should have for her.’

‘But how can we afford one? And do you think any self-respecting nanny would work in this house? We don’t even employ a cook, let alone – oh, heavens. And I won’t have Alice shut in a cupboard, or forbidden to suck her thumb, or spanked, or –’

‘You’re still weak from the birth,’ Michael said, looking down at her. ‘And this isn’t a self-respecting nanny, not in the sense you mean! She’s a good girl from Kerry who’s lost her place, because she was pregnant, poor child, and then she lost the baby. I found her drowning her sorrows, that’s how I know. She’s not trained, but she was eldest of her family, so she told me in the Crown, and she’s looked after infants since she herself was weaned. Oh, and you needn’t be thinking
she’s a drunkard, she was drinking her port as though it were nasty as medicine. And not to be wondered at, given the port at the Crown.’

Diana stared at him. ‘But Michael –’

‘I’ve got her downstairs. You’ll see if you like her. She’ll do any work which will keep her off the streets, she said – I said ten pounds a year and her keep for looking after Alice and having an eye to the housework, and she said, Done!’

Diana revived a little. ‘Didn’t you tell me once that the stupidity of the Kerrymen is a standing joke in Ireland?’

‘It is so. I prefer to make jokes about English stupidity.’

‘Michael, does this girl speak English? Isn’t County Kerry part of the Gaeltacht?’

‘Of course she speaks English! How do you suppose I managed to talk to her! And do you think an Irish girl would get a place as a skivvy in England if she spoke only Gaelic?’

‘Very well. I’d like to see her, at least. What is her name, Michael?’

‘Bridget O’Shea. You may have some trouble at first in understanding her, her accent’s very strong.’

Michael went out to fetch the girl, and he stayed away for a long time. Diana began to cry for no reason. Then she imagined, and next convinced herself, that Bridget O’Shea was or would be Michael’s mistress. Physical passion held their marriage together, and made all their differences negligible: now this would not be so. Michael would keep Bridget O’Shea on the collapsed bed in the studio.

Diana was just beginning to remember the full ferocity and tenderness and loose ache of making love, and to want her husband inside her again after eight weeks’ abstinence. She let out a sob, and Alice too began to howl. At that sound, Diana thought of her own incompetence in changing her baby’s napkins, winding her and even feeding her. She was prepared hopelessly to welcome her husband’s pert Irish mistress. Afterwards, she thought, she would go back to her family and mourn these eighteen happy months of her life forever.

When the door opened again, Diana’s self-control snapped back into place.

‘This is Bridget, my dear,’ said Michael.

‘Ah, the poor little mite!’ cried Bridget, looking at the roaring, tousled baby at the foot of the bed. Then she blushed.

Michael smiled, and Diana sat up straight. ‘I – understand you wish to apply – to be Alice’s nurse?’ said Diana above the noise. She blew her nose and wiped her eyes.

‘Yes,’ said Bridget wonderingly. ‘Mr Molloy did say –’

‘Yes, I know. Oh, how ridiculous this is! My husband said you had had experience in looking after your brothers and sisters – if you can only make the child quiet, you can be her nurse for as long as you like!’ Diana fell back on the pillows, feeling like a caricatured tyrant. She loved Alice dearly.

Bridget O’Shea picked up the baby and hushed her for a moment. Diana saw that she might have been pretty, but was not because she was so thin. The shape of her face was round as a muffin, but her cheeks were hollow, and there were grey shadows of hunger about her snub nose. She had expected a black-haired and blue-eyed colleen, but Bridget had frizzy golden hair, and light freckled eyes.

Alice began to grumble again. ‘She’s wet, mam – where do you keep her little napkins, then?’ Bridget said.

‘Over there.’ Diana pointed to a chest of drawers.

Bridget proceeded to change the baby on top of the chest, watched by the Molloys. Her hands shook a little, but that did not seem to disturb Alice. ‘Do you feed her at the breast, mam?’ said Bridget, when she had finished. She spoke quite naturally, because she was so bewildered at this sudden change in her life. She had eaten well for the first time in two weeks, and hope and curiosity had temporarily blown away her private unhappiness.

‘Oh, yes. So much less trouble than one of those dreadful bottles!’

‘And so much better for the little one, mam!’

Bridget then said something to Alice in Gaelic and Diana guessed that, even before her pregnancy and miscarriage, she would not have made a good under-servant in a conventional household. She was a spirited girl and seemed to be only feebly aware of class distinctions, and the necessity of treating
body functions as taboo. Diana herself was now a socialist as well as a bohemian, and believed all people of spirit and intelligence to be equal, all stupid people to be objects of compassion.

She had a vision of making Bridget a companion, of merely having a woman she liked in the house. She realised then how long she had been cut off by Michael from her own sex. Michael was standing there now, smiling away. He must have thought of all this too.

*

Lady Blentham and Violet called at Mornington Terrace the day after Bridget O’Shea’s arrival. Angelina had not seen Diana since her marriage, but she had written several letters and received teasing, evasive replies. As she stood on the doorstep, she felt tears in her eyes, and she told herself she would not be angry. Camden Town upset her very much.

Violet, who was dressed for the grouse-moors, said: ‘Isn’t this a rather charming part of London? Variety, you know. Awful pity about the railway line, imagine poor old Didie’s bed rattling every single night with the trains going past. I believe there are quite a lot of artists living in this district, or somewhere else, I can’t remember. Walter was being rather a bore about it the other day. Isn’t there quite a famous music-hall very near here?’

‘I’ve no idea, Violet.’

‘She
is
taking a long time to answer the bell. She wasn’t looking very well, physically, when I saw her last – rather overworked with only a charwoman, and her writing to do. She takes it awfully seriously now, Mamma. But so happy!’

‘Happiness is indeed a blessing,’ said Lady Blentham.

Bridget pulled open the door, with Alice on her arm, and said: ‘Good morning, your Ladyships, Mrs Molloy’s been expecting you! Will your Ladyships please to mind the step and follow me – this is Alice, Miss Alice, and I’ll be taking her in to Mrs Molloy directly!’ She held the door wide open, and ran upstairs.

Lady Blentham, who had understood only the gist of Bridget’s rapid speech, was very shocked, yet inclined to smile. Violet laughed.

‘Oh, Didie is
extraordinary
!’

They followed Bridget upstairs, to the double-windowed sitting-room from which all the Aesthetic decorations of the early eighties had now been removed. There were paintings by Michael on the walls, and Persian rugs as frayed and faded, but not originally as good, as those at Dunstanton lay on the bare floor. The room was extremely untidy. They saw Bridget give Alice to Diana, who was seated in a cane armchair, and then run out past them on to the landing.

Diana raised her head, and Lady Blentham tried to decide whether she was plainer or prettier than before. Her own hands were shaking on top of her cane.

‘Vio,’ said Diana, ‘I didn’t expect you to come with Mamma.’

‘Oh, I decided to. I haven’t seen Alice, after all. Darling, let me hold her!’ Violet ran forward and picked up the child with expert hands. ‘Oh, she’s so like you. Look, Mamma!’

Diana wished passionately that Violet had not come. She thought her mother had aged terribly in the past year. She was not yet sixty, but her hair was nearly white.

‘She used to have quantities of black hair but it fell out quite suddenly a couple of days ago,’ said Diana.

‘Oh, she’ll be blonde,’ said Violet. ‘Look at that.’ She pushed at a cobweb-thin line of hairs at the nape of Alice’s neck.

‘Mamma, do sit down,’ said Diana. ‘Why are you using a stick?’

‘I sprained my ankle a month ago. At my age, these things do not mend quite so easily as they did when one was young. Violet, I wonder – do you think you could leave us for a little while?’

Violet stared and wrinkled her nose. ‘Didie?’

‘Do you mind dreadfully being sent out, Vio? Mamma has something to say to me, I can tell,’ said Diana, looking out of the window.

Violet put her head on one side. ‘Tell me Didie, is that very odd girl your
maid
?’

‘She only came yesterday. She will be Alice’s nurse – she’s not a trained palourmaid, as you will have noticed.’

Violet looked from Diana to her mother, returned Alice, picked up her skirt and left, smiling crossly.

‘My dear,’ said Angelina, ‘my dear.’ She paused, and said in an unstately way: ‘Violet was trying to make this easier for us both, but –’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Diana. ‘I hope she isn’t too much offended.’

‘No.’

Diana adjusted her child’s dress and shawl. ‘I presume you came on Alice’s account?’