The Memoirs of Irene Adler: The Irene Adler Trilogy (22 page)

Although the honeymoon was a big disappointment to her, she was going to stick to her resolution. She visited the associate vicar of St Paul’s who was a friend of the baronet and asked for an audience. The Jersey born Father Adrian (Vernay de La Tour) was very sympathetic and encouraged her to confess. Harriet, for all her past trespasses was an innocent at heart and as such had no misgivings about revealing all her secrets to the man of the cloth. She noticed how he blushed and blinked. ‘My dear Harriet,’ he said, ‘I daresay that in my twenty-three years in the service of our Lord, no one has opened her heart as completely to me as you have. I am impressed by how sincerely you want to repent. You
have sinned a lot, but as you know, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one lost lamb who returns to the fold than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t trespassed.’ Indeed that pearl of wisdom was something she often reflected upon, and she was going to cling to it like a raft in her sea of corruption. Adrian (‘Call me Adrian, your Ladyship’) expressed the certainty that she was going to make a success of her marriage in view of her sincere determination. He urged her to pray morning and night, to meditate and to read the “good book” as well as other good books. He offered her tea and disappeared for ten minutes. When he came back, he had three tomes which he gave her as a present:
Imitation of Christ
by Thomas à Kempis,
At the back of the North Wind
by George MacDonald and
Pilgrim’s Progress
by John Bunyan.

She had followed the instructions of the good associate vicar to the letter. She strove to curb her natural rebellious instincts and dampen her inner fires, surprising herself at how well she succeeded in her attempt at being wifely. She found that meditation was useful in keeping lubricious thoughts at bay. Sir Charles had bought a house in Belgrave Square in order to be near Westminster where he had to discharge his duties as a Member of Parliament. Harriet would have preferred to live there with him. He, however, decreed that his wife should reside at Walton Hall, his ancestral home. Every night she prayed that the Good Lord would bless her with a child, convinced that once she became a mother it would help her to stay on the straight and narrow. Initially she had no interest in gardening and was only mildly interested in riding, but she understood that with Charles being away sometimes for two weeks at a time she needed to occupy herself meaningfully. This was how she developed her keen interest in botany, something which was to become a lifelong passion.

Walton Hall was a vast place. So many rooms (one of these days she was going to count them). So many walks. Gardens to cultivate and cosy corners where one might sit in a nice quiet nook and read, watch birds and butterflies in the air and fishes in the pond, or admire and breathe in the fragrance of the roses.

The passion that Charles had manifested during their honeymoon in Davos had left her with hope that they were going to have a proper physical relationship, but it was only a fleeting illusion. She knew that
not all early morning prayer sessions and Bible readings could quench her passionate fires indefinitely. She guessed the reason why she always seemed to have a small temperature. But if sleeping alone in a large bed whilst husband was busy governing the country was something of an imposition, all week long she imagined how they would make up for it when he came back from London Thursday night as he had promised.

The first Thursday after her husband had gone to London, she would tell me years later, she had planned the perfect welcome for him: what she was going to wear, what perfume to daub behind her ears, what she was going to order the kitchen to lay on the table. She had re-arranged the bedroom herself and had chosen the bed linen, a lilac coloured sheet with small flowers, in damask, a rather unusual choice when anything but plain white was frowned upon. It was Arabella who had bought them for her in a
boutique
in Geneva specially as a wedding present to her.

She had imagined that the instant Charles arrived he would pounce upon her and whisk her off to bed, leaving maids and gardeners open-mouthed. She had therefore ordered that a choice of wines and liqueurs, bonbons and biscuits be sent to the bedroom. Her heart was beating when she heard the faint galloping sounds become more marked. The cab sped with a flourish towards the veranda and stopped miraculously just at the level of the steps leading inside. Her husband emerged from the carriage looking no worse for wear after three hours on the train and forty minutes by hansom.

‘I opened wide my arms to embrace him,’ Harriet would tell me. ‘He didn’t even look at me and addressed Perkins the groom who must have been used to the drill. “Right, fellow, has he he been alright?” ’ He, it turned out, was his favourite horse
Otto
, a Hanoverian that he had shipped from Germany at great expense.

‘The combination of my open arms with my now gaping mouth must have made me look like a true scarecrow,’ laughed Harriet as she merrily recounted her tribulation to me, safe in the knowledge that the past held no more threat.

‘I bet you’re dying to know if we indulged in marital relations that weekend.’ Harriet asked me, but answered the question herself. ‘Yes, we did. Not on Thursday. He was exhausted. Not Friday, as he was too busy
organising the hunt. Not Saturday when he was too tired after the chase. Not Sunday night as he had to write letters. However, just past midnight on Monday morning we had…eh…no, why am I saying
we
? He devoted all of five minutes poking me with his half limp ding-a-ling, gasped for breath and before I could wipe my parts he had turned round and was snoring, no doubt dreaming of
Otto
.’

‘So you gave up on him then?’

‘Who do you take me for? A woman with common sense?’

No, she convinced herself that the deplorable event of that weekend was just a one-off. Having a wife was new to him and he had to be given time to adjust. Most men act strangely at first. She really should become pregnant. A child will make all the difference. Besides she had heard that childbirth usually dampened the libido, sometimes forever. It would please him to have a son, someone to teach riding and hunting, she had thought wryly. A sad fact of life though, was that babies don’t just sprout up like daisies on the lawn. Seeds needed to be sown, and that was not happening. In the meantime, she redoubled her reading of the texts and her meditation sessions in an attempt to stop sinful thoughts breaking through the defences that she had erected from invading her mind.

‘Clearly it did not?’ wise old Irene asked. She did not reply.

Charles was unable to come to Warwickshire for three weeks after that, but sent word that he was coming with Bertie, and to make sure everything was in perfect order. Bertie likes venison and swan. Who is this Bertie who likes venison and swan, she had wondered. Harriet was instructed to send appropriate coaches to Warwick Railway Station to meet the 5:19 train from Paddington.

When the coaches arrived at Walton House, Charles got down and glared at her furiously before holding the door to allow his paunchy companion to descend. ‘What a fool I had been,’ thought Harriet immediately. Of course Bertie was none other than the Prince of Wales. ‘I am a giddy mare, I had not thought of it!’ She understood that her husband was sulking because she had sent an ordinary coach to the station to fetch royalty, something he felt had cost him some credit in the eyes of the future monarch.

I myself had seen the His Royal Portliness once or twice before, but had yet to be introduced to him. When I saw him in Drury Lane, and again at Covent Garden, he had leered at me obliquely and as was his wont with almost everybody of the weaker sex, making a mute declaration of what he would love to do to one.

Harriet, like the whole of London (and Paris) knew of his libertinage. Stories of his sexual prowess circulated regularly. The scandal of his seduction of fifteen-year-old Patsy Frederick, daughter of an Irish church dignitary, had been splashed over the pages of
Lloyd’s Weekly
, and had propelled the poor girl into a forced marriage to Lord Cornwallis-West, a man as old as her own father. Everybody knew of his regular visits to
Le Chabanais
, the notorious Parisian bordello where a
chaise d’amour
enabling the most sophisticated and perverted sexual practices between at least three performers had been delivered specially for his delectation.
The Pall Mall Gazette
regularly mentioned the Belgian king’s yacht
Alberta
which docked on the Thames two or three times a month, for the purpose of orgies with girls as young as twelve or thirteen, procured by the notorious Mrs Jeffries of Chelsea, at which Bertie was a regular visitor. Harriet did not disapprove of anybody wanting to indulge in illicit pleasures, but thought it was criminal to corrupt innocent girls. The story of how the Queen had him dispatched to a military camp in Ireland in an attempt to dampen his gargantuan appetites had kept London amused for months, although Queen Victoria herself was not, when she found out that her wayward son had arranged for the actress Nellie Clifden to be smuggled into his tent, with the connivance of his superior officer, disguised as a cadet.

Harriet had even met Alice Keppel who sometimes came to Arabella’s parties in Knightsbridge. She had heard of at least ten other mistresses. She did not doubt that many a hussy claimed to have bedded the lecherous prince when this only happened in their dreams, but prince or not, she would give him short shrift if he tried anything. No, he was not the sort of man that Harriet would have hankered after, even if she were free.

He had kissed the hand which she proffered, holding on to it meaningfully, the intent in this not escaping her. She was surprised, but she
had to admit that in his presence her determination to give him the cold shoulder wavered.

‘He was a fine specimen I daresay. Had I not taken my vow of fidelity, I would have been in all states at his very proximity. There was something that can only be described as an aura of lust surrounding him. What am I saying?’ Harriet exclaimed during the telling of her tale. ‘I
was
in all states, but I struggled to not let it colour my judgement.’

She was naturally seated next to the royal visitor. All the time he was devouring swan and venison, sometimes simultaneously, he was also openly devouring Harriet with his lascivious eyes, and “accidentally on purpose” stroking her leg with his and letting it linger there. She could not swear that Mordaunt was unaware of this but he kept beaming happily at his illustrious visitor. Harriet knew of course that as a close friend of Bertie he was a member of the notorious Marlborough House set, and that as such he must have participated in at least some of the orgies said to take place there regularly.

His royal highness being seemingly dispensed of the requirement of not talking with his mouth full, was loudly reminiscing about the rollicking time they had at Marlborough House only last week, guffawing ceaselessly and blithely spluttering out bits of flesh mixed with spit, whilst at the same time increasing the pressure on her thigh. In the beginning his action might have been construed as inevitable for two people seated in close proximity, but there was nothing unintentional about his grabbing her inner thigh with his left hand whilst conveying a massive lump of swan into his royal maw, making no effort to hide this from Harriet’s husband. Again Charles failed to react.

‘Suddenly it dawned upon me that he was complicit in all this. Bertie had his permission to do as he pleased here.’ Harriet’s voice quavered with emotion at the memory. ‘There was I fighting a losing battle to keep my ardour under control, and my husband was playing the pander.’ Fortunately as her anger rose, her lust went down accordingly like in Mr Joseph Bramah’s famous hydraulic press.

Harriet was not surprised when, after the two men had been closeted with the officials in the library planning next day’s hunt, Charles said that he was turning in early as he did not have the stamina of the illustrious
visitor. Could Harriet be so kind as to keep “His Royal H” company whilst he indulged in another cigar and
Armagnac
. Any doubt that still lingered in her mind about her husband and the lecherous prince’s plan, evaporated completely. She resented the fact that the prince was exercising his
droit du seigneur
, but her body had once more started craving for a sexual thrill. When the time came, as she knew it had to, she gave herself to the future king wholeheartedly. Bertie was almost as good in bed at Coleridge, Harriet said, launching into details of the latter’s endowment and technique which I found excessive.

‘Yes, yes, Coleridge is good,’ I said, somewhat feeling the need to remind her of my prior claims to the tenor.

‘Oh, and when I joined Charles in our bed, he gave such a fake snore that I immediately understood it to be a thank you for consolidating his position vis à vis the future monarch.’

Her first thought in the cold light of the morning after was to rush to London to see Adrian at St Paul’s. Instead she took to her room with a copy of
The Decameron
, a French edition with very suggestive colour prints and this left her in a frenzied state. In a fit of madness she tore the pages of the book, put them in a porcelain basin and took a Lucifer stick to them, watching the flames and smoke go up whilst her tears streamed down her cheeks in torrents. She was grateful to the fever which resulted from her torment and took to her bed for three days, after which she wrote a note to Charles informing him that she had gone to Knightsbridge to stay with Arabella.

Charles wrote to say that it was a good idea, as he was going fishing in Norway for ten days with Bertie. She now remembered a few riotous nights but none of the faceless men she bestowed her favours on that occasion. Yes, she had tried to be good, had failed and felt she had to make up for lost time.

‘Don’t look at me with disapproval, Irene,’ she told me in a tone which said that she had no regrets. ‘Men do that sort of thing all the time, cheat with their best friends’ wives, visit whores, deflower girls of twelve and laugh about their exploits. Why can’t we have a
little
bit of fun?’ I had long realised that the poor thing was suffering from that affliction that the experts were calling
nymphomania
, for which, whatever
the associate vicar might have advised, there was no cure. Whatever anybody might say about camphor or monk’s pepper.