The Urchin's Song (28 page)

Was Oliver acquainted with the Prince of Wales? He’d spoken of meeting the Prince quite naturally and Lily had said something along the same lines that night in Hartlepool. Certainly the press had made much of the Prince of Wales’s unconventional behaviour and somewhat dubious associates in the past, dubbing him the Prince of Pleasure among other things, Josie thought soberly. It was common knowledge he was an ardent follower of fashion, as well as being the leader of society and the prime influence on upper-class conduct. Twice the papers had reported the Prince’s involvement in unsavoury court cases, one involving adultery and the other gambling, and it was said he lived his life in a whirl of amusements. He’d been booed and hissed on some of his public appearances, and Josie could remember Frank speaking scathingly of the heir to the throne whilst being a fierce supporter of Queen Victoria.

Josie pretended to be interested in the misty view outside the carriage but her heart was pounding and the blood rushing in her ears. She was out of her league here, oh, she was. How on earth was she going to compare with the likes of Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley and the rest? And if -
if
- she did meet the Prince of Wales . . . She swallowed hard. It seemed impossible, certainly, but the world of theatre had a way of bringing low-born and high-born together in a way nothing else could.

And then she took hold of herself, responding naturally enough to Gertie’s enthusing about the grand buildings and fine carriages even as that inner voice said,
Don’t be daft, girl, you can do it.
The aristocracy, all those fine ladies and gentlemen, even the Prince himself, were just men and women beneath all their wealth and extravagance. True, half of them didn’t know they were born and she dare say they’d faint at the sight of a cockroach or a rat in the street, let alone their sumptuous mansions, but they still had two legs and two arms same as her, and they had to visit the privy whether they were dressed in silk or rags.

The rain had dwindled to a drizzle when the carriage pulled up outside Oliver’s large townhouse in St James’s, one of the more fashionable parts of London. He had insisted that Josie and Gertie dine with him before he took them to the small hotel in Brompton where they were to reside for the time being.

As Josie looked at the house through the carriage window the door opened and a uniformed maid stood in the entrance holding a large umbrella, which she pushed up as she ran down the steps and across the cobbled pavement to the carriage. Oliver climbed down first, saying, ‘Thank you, Roberts,’ but without glancing at the girl, and as he helped Josie, and then Gertie down from the carriage, the little maid held the umbrella over them whilst getting wet herself.

Josie wanted to protest, and as she met Gertie’s eyes and her sister raised her eyebrows she knew Gertie was feeling the same, but out of consideration for Oliver in front of his staff she held her tongue and they proceeded into the house.

From the outside the large, double-fronted, three-storey property did not look particularly impressive, but once in the hall Josie realised this was a very big house and moreover, beautifully decorated and furnished. Another maid took their coats, hats and gloves, and probably due to the exquisitely worked, crimson carpet which ran in a strip down the hall, and the magnificent staircase in deep mahogany, Josie suddenly became aware that her dress was not new and that the colour - a pale dove grey - seemed rather dull. There was an upholstered couch with two small tables either side of it, and several fine paintings on the dark brown walls, but Josie had no time to notice anything further before a small, bustling, sharp-eyed housekeeper appeared. She was dressed in black alpaca like the maids but unlike them had no white cap or apron, and Oliver greeted her warmly, saying, ‘Ah, Mrs Wilde. We have arrived, as you can see. We will have tea in the drawing room.’

‘Yes, sir. I trust you had a good journey, sir?’

‘Adequate.’

This was said over Oliver’s shoulder as he drew Josie and Gertie towards a door down the hall to their left, and again, as Josie stepped into the room she met Gertie’s eyes and saw reflected the same sense of awe she was experiencing. There was a roaring log fire set in a deep marble fireplace at the end of the room and even situated where they were, just within the room, the heat struck them. The drapes at the two sets of windows, the carpet, the upholstery of the couches and chairs scattered here and there were all in a rich peacock blue, with the walls panelled and the ceiling light brown. It was luxurious and opulent and yet at the same time very masculine. Josie didn’t know if she liked it or not but it was undoubtedly beautiful.

‘Come and sit down and warm yourselves.’ There was a couch placed at an angle to the fire, and as he gestured in its direction Josie and Gertie walked the length of the room and seated themselves, Oliver taking a fine Queen Anne chair with cabriole legs and drawing it close to them.

‘This is very striking. You have a lovely home.’ Josie glanced at a gleaming walnut-veneered occasional table enhanced by herringbone inlays as she spoke, and wondered how many families in Sunderland’s East End it would feed, before mentally shaking herself. This was Oliver’s home and he had the right to furnish it as he pleased. Why was she thinking like this?

‘Thank you.’ He had picked up a trace of something in her voice and he couldn’t quite place what it was. But she didn’t seem overly impressed, unlike her sister who was unashamedly gaping. Had he expected to impress her? Oliver looked into himself and had to admit the answer was that he had
hoped
to impress her. This did not sit comfortably, and his voice was somewhat tight when he said, ‘We will just have tea and refreshments and then perhaps you would both like to see round the house and garden? The garden is not large, the rear of it having been cobbled over for the carriage and stable.’

What she would
like
would be to go straight to the hotel and have a quiet meal before going to bed where she could think over all that had happened and marshal her whirling thoughts, but she couldn’t very well say so when he’d put himself out to such an extent and been so kind.

Josie forced all reluctance from her voice as she said, ‘Thank you, that would be lovely.’

‘Or perhaps you would prefer to rest quietly here? It was a tiring journey.’

She smiled at him now, a twinkle in her eye as she said, ‘We’re quite tough you know, Gertie and I. It would take more than a train journey to tire us,’ melting all stiffness from his voice as he answered, ‘Is that so? Good, good. I have a boy who comes every morning for a few hours to see to the two cobs, but they are always ready for visitors, being gentle-tempered creatures. We will find a titbit or two to take to them.’

She bobbed her head in reply, and as he smiled at her he wondered how this slip of a girl could manage to make his emotions see-saw so violently. He didn’t understand it - he really did not understand it, but suddenly all he could think about was her. How on earth had he managed thus far without her?

The next few weeks were a period of great personal adjustment for Josie and, to a lesser extent, Gertie too. Each day the two girls left their little hotel in Brompton after breakfast and rarely returned before late evening, often dining with Oliver at his own residence before he took them home in his carriage. The hotel was basically one step up from the bed and breakfast establishments Josie and Gertie had been used to in the past, but the proprietress was known to Oliver - Josie was to find that her agent had contacts in all walks of life - and she looked after the two girls very well.

The days were spent in a whirl of dress fittings, singing lessons, elocution and deportment instruction and other coaching Oliver deemed important, and the evenings - once the carriage had returned the two girls to Oliver’s house - in reading and talking with Oliver himself. These were the times Josie enjoyed the most. Slowly and skilfully, Oliver was opening up her mind, acquainting her with the works of Shelley, the sisters Brontë and Robert Louis Stevenson among others, as well as encouraging her to become familiar with the social characteristics of the age. He did not discuss politics, however; such things were a man’s province and only men could understand the finer points of internal and foreign affairs.

Every evening, the
Illustrated London News
, a weekly newspaper which had started life early in Queen Victoria’s reign, was brought out and its contents discussed at great length, and Oliver found himself frequently surprised at how quickly Josie grasped new ideas and concepts.

From her friendly, relaxed manner towards him, Oliver was well aware that as yet Josie had no idea that he was treating her any differently from the other clients and protégées on his books, and for the moment he was content to let matters take their course. Partly, he had to admit when he examined his feelings, because he was in something of a spin and it was disconcerting to say the least. Josie was not of his class, that was one thing, and not even from good stock such as clergymen or something similar. His own father might have been a wastrel and a gambler, but his ancestry had been impeccable, and his mother’s people had had connections with some of the highest nobility in the land. Of course, Josie’s background wouldn’t have mattered a jot if he had been going to take her as his mistress, and by the time he had finished coaching her she would be able to hold her own in any company, but . . . Oliver sighed deeply and gnawed at his lower lip for a moment in a way he did countless times a day when reflecting on the problem. He knew Josie well enough by now to know she wouldn’t countenance such a proposal. She had the working-class conviction that such women were bad, and although this irked him he knew he would not be able to change the tenet imbibed since babyhood.

Another thing that was causing him some personal discomfort was the discovery of an emotion hitherto unknown, jealousy. He had been pleased once they were on the train to the capital, and seeing Josie and her sister installed in the premises run by an acquaintance of his had given him some satisfaction, but it wasn’t until Josie had been in London a month and an old friend had called unexpectedly one evening that Oliver had faced the fact that he wanted to be pre-eminent in her regard.

He had resented the way she had sparkled under his friend’s compliments, and after Milton had left and he had taken Josie and Gertie back to their hotel, he had returned home and sat in the drawing room in front of the fire with a bottle of whisky until dawn, by which time the bottle was empty and he had come to terms with a trait of possessiveness in his nature he hadn’t known existed. It had been as much distancing her from that big, ignorant lout who purportedly had something to do with Ginnett’s in Newcastle, as removing her from danger, which had prompted the relief he’d felt once the train had pulled out of Sunderland Central. And the fact that it was a proprietress and not a proprietor had influenced his choice of accommodation for the girl too. Which made him . . . What? Someone he wasn’t sure he knew, he acknowledged in a haze of whisky. Which was . . . His fuddled mind searched for the right word. Disturbing. That was it, disturbing.

He was going to have to do some serious thinking in the next little while, damn it, and to cap it all, according to Milton, Stella was back and already asking questions about ‘the little chit’ - Stella’s terminology, not his, Milton had been at pains to explain - that Oliver was apparently tied up with at the moment. All he needed was for Stella to throw one of her screaming tantrums. Not that she had any right to do so, none at all, he assured himself silently, but then when had that stopped her in the past? What’s more, Josie was a good ten years younger than Stella, something Milton had pointed out before he had left. And when Oliver had asked him what the hell that had to do with anything, Milton merely shook his head, almost pityingly, before adding, ‘Women, my dear fellow, set great store by such things.’

And so the days and weeks had passed. As March 1900 had gone out like a lamb, April came in on the gust of the incredible news that the Prince of Wales had survived an assassination attempt! A sixteen-year-old anarchist had fired two shots at him from point-blank range on a Brussels railway station. Brussels had been a centre of opposition to the British role in the Boer War for some time, and Jean-Baptiste Sipido told police he wanted to kill the Prince who had had so many men killed in South Africa.

‘Particularly ironic, don’t you think,’ Oliver had commented to Josie when they had read the report in the
Illustrated London News
, ‘when Queen Victoria refuses the Prince access to most serious affairs of state and treats him as a child, rather than a grown man of fifty-eight years of age?’

‘Does she?’ Josie had heard the rumours, of course. Everyone was aware that the relationship between the old Queen and her son was not a happy one. ‘That must be frustrating for him but then he doesn’t seem to mind
too
much.’

He did not answer her for a moment, and his voice had changed when he said softly, ‘He endures what he has to endure for the present with a view to the prize at the end of his trial.’

Josie looked at him in surprise. They were sitting in Oliver’s magnificent drawing room, she, Gertie and Oliver, and in a few moments one of the maids would come and inform them that dinner was ready and light the lamps, but for the moment the room was bathed in a soft twilight. Josie was sitting with Gertie on a fine chaise-longue set at an angle to the full-length windows as she read items out loud from the newspaper for discussion, but Oliver was some way across the room and in shadow and she couldn’t see his face clearly. But he had sounded . . . odd. As though his thoughts were not really on the Prince of Wales at all. And then he disabused her of this notion when he said, his voice brisk once more, ‘The Prince pursues pleasure as an antidote to boredom, my dear, and does so with characteristic enthusiasm and determination. He is a man of enormous drive but in the opinion of most sympathetic ministers and diplomats, is given little opportunity by the Queen to exercise his energies responsibly.’