by John Pearson
Instead he did his best to act as if nothing had gone wrong, and he acted badly. All he did was alienate Marjorie. (“Richard has suddenly become so boring,” she confided to Prudence. “I just can’t think why.”) He knew this too, and to make it worse discovered—as most jealous husbands do—that Marjorie had never seemed so lovely or desirable before.
Finally he decided that the one sane course was to have a few days apart. Hugo and Lilianne had invited them for a few days to their new country place at Oakthorpe, not far from Ashby de la Zouch. Using the excuse of the big Irish debate due that week, Richard suggested that Marjorie go alone—and was pained by the alacrity with which she agreed.
Richard hated being alone. It was bad enough with Hudson gone. Without Marjorie, Eaton Place was not home at all. He breakfasted alone and dined alone. He also slept alone. (The thought of seeking consolation did occur to him, but he was too miserable by now to do anything about it.) Trouble still rumbled between O’Donovan and Mrs. Bridges; his stomach suffered as a result. He found he was edgy with the children: they missed their mother too, whatever Nanny Webster might say to the contrary.
The only alleviation of his troubles lay in the House of Commons. He had his friends there and for these few days attended the debates more conscientiously than he had done for years. He also made a speech on Ireland. It was rather out of character—a bitter, angry speech in which he named Parnell as “the source of all that wretched nation’s troubles”—but for Richard it worked off a little of the anger that had been building up for several weeks. It also brought him jeers and fury from the opposition—and made the headlines in the evening papers.
Two days later, just after breakfast, O’Donovan brought him a message. There were two gentlemen downstairs to see him.
“Gentlemen?” said Richard. “What sort of gentlemen, and what do they want?”
“Just gentlemen,” O’Donovan replied. “They didn’t say.”
“They must say,” Richard answered testily. “Good heavens, man, I can’t have strangers coming in my house without even announcing what they want. You will please go and either find out or send them packing.”
Two minutes later O’Donovan was back. “Mr. Bellamy, your honour, they still won’t say. I think you’d better see them.”
“Really, O’Donovan, what is going on?” and still clutching his copy of that morning’s Times, Richard strode from the dining room and out across the hall. As he did so there was a flash and an explosion and something knocked him to the ground. People were running. Someone shouted, “Death to Ireland’s enemies!” and the front door slammed.
Richard lay by the stairs. There was a great pain in his chest and his head was bursting, but he had not lost consciousness. Someone else ran past him, then he heard Mrs. Bridges’ reassuringly familiar voice calling him from what seemed miles away.
“Mr. Bellamy. Mr. Bellamy, sir!” Then, “Alice, don’t just stand there. Fetch Dr. Bingley instantly! Boy, off to the police. Tell them they’ve tried to murder Mr. Bellamy!”
He must have lost consciousness then, for the next thing Richard remembered was coming to in St. George’s Hospital. The pain across his chest was so intense that he groaned, then fainted again.
His next memory was of Dr. Bingley’s plump face peering down at him and asking rather pointlessly, “Feeling better, Bellamy?” It was a question Richard felt too ill to answer, but despite the pain, he remained conscious then. Luckily, the doctors had already seen to his injuries, dressed his wound, and made him as comfortable as possible.
“How bad is it?” Richard whispered.
“Not as bad as it might have been,” said Dr. Bingley cheerfully. “The bullet missed your heart and came out just below your shoulder. You’ve lost a lot of blood, but no vital organs are damaged as far as I can tell. Lucky that cook of yours kept her head and fetched me as quickly as she did. Probably saved your life.”
The attempt on his life turned Richard from an obscure M.P. into the nearest he ever came to being a public hero. The news swiftly reached Westminster, and by lunchtime he had been visited by Lord Salisbury in person. (His lordship said, “Dastardly, dastardly!” Richard smiled weakly. Salisbury said, “Dastardly!” again and departed shaking his big grey beard as if in disapproval of the dreadful times they lived in.)
There were further visitors. A police superintendent from New Scotland Yard took a statement (not that there was much that Richard could tell him) and informed him that “the assailants have made their getaway”; Mrs. Bridges arrived with beef tea and a knuckle of boiled veal and the news that O’Donovan the butler had disappeared; and finally an equerry from the Palace brought a message from the Queen wishing her loyal M.P. God’s blessing and the royal hopes for a swift recovery. By early afternoon he had had enough. A doctor offered him a sleeping draught and he floated off gratefully into a dreamless slumber.
When he awoke it was nighttime. There was a faint lamp burning in the middle of the ward and somebody was with him. He felt a hand take his, and Marjorie’s voice was saying very softly, “Richard, my dearest one, I’m here.”
He looked at her and smiled. She was more beautiful than he had ever seen her.
“I’m never leaving you again,” she said, and kissed him tenderly.
The attempted murder remained a mystery, though it was put down to a pair of Irish terrorists. Descriptions were issued by the police and the investigation dragged on, but no one was ever caught. Paradoxically, this unsolved crime solved some other problems in Richard’s life, including the future of his marriage. The high-flying social life was over for both him and Marjorie. She nursed him through his convalescence and afterwards took him to the South of France, where for a month they had a sort of second honeymoon.
When they got back they found that the unknown gunmen had helped them with another problem. O’Donovan had never reappeared and was therefore assumed to have been involved with the terrorists, and an apologetic letter had arrived from Hudson expressing deep concern and asking to be taken back. There was no mention of his wife. Richard telegraphed immediately telling him to come.
With Hudson back, alone, life finally returned to normal. Richard never liked to ask him what had happened with his marriage. (Years afterwards he heard that they had not got on, had parted, and the wife had died.) Nor did he find out if there was any truth to his suspicions about Marjorie and the Prince. With wives as with butlers certain mysteries are best left as they are.
1895
9. Richard Resurgent
Most mornings in the autumn of 1894 at around nine o’clock Richard Bellamy could be seen standing by himself on the black-and-gold-painted iron bridge in St. James’s Park watching the ducks. During the past few years his figure had filled out, his face had lost that faint hollowness of youth, his hair had started to turn grey. At forty-one he had now reached the one-way doors of middle age, but he was one of those fortunate few who mature physically quite early in life, then never seem to change; and certainly the last few years had not done much to age him.
These had been years—as he in his own apologetic way would have been the first to admit—of quiet self-indulgence. After the year of Victoria’s first jubilee—his year of incidents—life had mysteriously slowed down: no crises and no great excitements either. The children had started to grow up; James was eleven now and Elizabeth was nine. Marjorie had changed from the girl he married into a woman in her prime: their love, rather like their life itself, had now become more placid and, Richard would have said, far more profound. (Marjorie, although a little restless and occasionally a little bored, would probably have agreed.) The keynote of these years had been contentment. Even that gloomy day more than a year ago, when Richard lost his seat in Parliament (in the big Liberal landslide which brought eighty-seven-year-old Gladstone back for his fourth and final ministry) had really done little to upset his equanimity. Rather the reverse. He told himself that he had had enough of politics. It was a thankless, dirty business and he con
soled himself philosophically with the thought that his sort of personality simply was not made for active politics. Nor was his background. He was not tough enough, nor arrogant enough, nor rich enough to reach the parliamentary heights. Gilded young men like Arthur Balfour might (especially if, like Balfour, they happened to have Lord Salisbury for an uncle), but Richard hadn’t been prepared to settle for much less. If he lacked the qualities to take him to the top, he also lacked the resignation to plod on as a perpetual back-bencher.
And so, like many ambitious men before him, he had bowed out of politics swearing he had done with it forever. His natural indolence had done the rest. He had slowed down a lot. Increasingly his life revolved round Eaton Place. He loved its comfort, its security, its warm and reassuringly set routines. Since Hudson had come back it was once more the perfect household, and life there could flow peacefully and comfortably by.
Indeed, it was hard to think of any way of life quite as agreeable as Richard’s now. He had no worries. (The children were still too young to be a nuisance, and since Hugo married the Southwolds had left the Bellamys alone.) There was sufficient money. (Richard had finally stopped fussing over living off his wife.) And 165 was everything a house should be. It had a modern bathroom now, with piped hot water from the boiler in the basement, and just that year electricity had been installed for lighting the first two storeys. At the same time 165 remained as solid and as civilised as when it was first built. Once inside it, Richard felt unassailable.
Durng his period out of politics, Richard had been occupied. He still wrote occasional journalism, though less than in the past. His real work had been his novel. He had been writing it for years, but now for the first time he could take it seriously. He had a title for it—“The Melting Pot”—and it had grown out of all recognition from the manuscript Zola had once rejected. What was fascinating about it was that the story was so similar to Richard’s own—a good-looking, bright young man comes up to London from the provinces, woos and then marries a rich politician’s daughter, then pits his wits against the hostile world of the metropolis. Where it differed from Richard’s real life was that his hero seemed to have all the qualities he lacked. He was ruthless, eloquent, and something of a bounder, unscrupulous with women and indomitable with men. He treated his wife dreadfully, had a series of affairs, made himself a fortune, and died cynically deriding the great “melting pot” of London for the unsatisfying sham it was.
It is hard to know how much of a conscious daydream this strange tale became. Perhaps it did not at all. Certainly Richard worked conscientiously at his book each morning, and started to see himself as something of a literary figure. He took endless trouble, à la Zola, getting the details and the background right. (He even re-visited the Commons twice and sat in the gallery with his notebook for his chapter on a great political debate.) Where he was all too conscious of his weakness as a novelist was in his portrayal of women. The virtuous ones all sounded like Marjorie and the unpleasant ones like Lady Southwold, but as he said to Marjorie (who read the book page by page each evening), “It’s so dashed difficult to be a good husband and a good novelist!”
When the book was finally finished and submitted to a publisher, Richard, like many a greater author, felt lost without his morning grind. It was then that he began his morning constitutional through the park, and as he watched the ducks, and felt the first sharp chill of autumn rising from the lake, he began to suffer the dangerous discontents of middle age. Perhaps the book would be a great success and make his name. Perhaps he had found his métier at last. But if not, what could he do? This perfect life he led could not go on without a purpose, and what purpose had his life except his book? He would stare thoughtfully across the lake at the crisp elegance of Horse-guards’ Parade and wonder, as middle-aged men in early autumn often do, just what he wanted from his life.
“Mr. Bellamy,” said a voice. “How are you, Mr. Bellamy, sir? They said I’d find you here.”
Richard turned and saw a fat man with a purple nose, a familiar bowler hat and an unmistakeable large cigar.
“Good heavens, Pyecombe, my dear chap! How very good to see you! And how’s the world of politics been treating you?”
Richard’s one-time agent shook his head.
“Dodgy, extremely dodgy, Mr. Bellamy. Ever since you lost the seat and then resigned as candidate nothing’s been quite the same. That Liberal, that Tatham fellow. Too big for his bloomin’ boots if you ask me, Mr. Bellamy. We’ve not much chance against a man like that.”
“But you’ve a candidate—rather a good one.”
Pyecombe shook his head and spat mournfully into the lake. “Had one. Past tense, Mr. Bellamy. Robinson the banker—just gone bankrupt. Never did like the man. No class, no breeding. Only money, and now not even that. A tragedy for us Conservatives and no mistake.”
“How very difficult,” said Richard lamely.
“You could say that—especially at a time like this, what with that old Gladstone cracking up and his government on the way out any day. We’ve got a seat now going begging if the right man comes along.”
“And nobody’s been after it?”
“Several, naturally.”
Pyecombe puffed at his cigar and looked away across the lake. “Several, including someone you know rather well. I won’t say who. But I will say this, Mr. Bellamy—and this is why I’m here. If you’ll take up the seat again I’ll guarantee you’ll get it. And I for one will be a very happy man to have you as our Member. Think on it, Mr. Bellamy. There’s no great hurry, but we have to know by the New Year at the latest. Now if you’ll excuse me …” Bowler conspiratorially around his ears, Pyecombe walked away.
“Well,” said Marjorie, “will you or won’t you?”
“Will I what?”
“Accept their offer?”
“What offer?”
“My love, I wasn’t born yesterday. Just two days ago, Pyecombe lost his candidate, and this morning he turns up all hot and bothered saying he must see you. There’s only one thing he could want. I think you should accept. Politics is still your life. It’s what you’re good at. I want to see you back in Parliament.”
But Richard pointedly refused to give an answer straight away. One side of him agreed with Marjorie and he was flattered to be asked to stand again. But against this stood the years of thwarted hopes and wasted effort from his time in Parliament. He had few illusions now about his old ambitions. He knew that he was secondrate, but still, but still … It was extremely tempting, and he had missed the strange excitements of the House. He weighed the pros and cons—and found it impossible to decide. Finally he wrote to Pyecombe, thanking him for his support and promising a firm decision by the first of January.
Christmas loomed, and once again the Bellamys prepared to spend it en famille at Southwold. Richard had given up objecting to this practice, which had become traditional. Marjorie assumed that they were going, and so did the children—and against the assumptions of his family, Richard was powerless.
These last few weeks before the Christmas holidays were a disturbing period for him. As usual at this time of year he felt guilty about his mother. She was in her seventies and although he knew that she would have adored to spend Christmas with them, it was impossible. Not that she complained. She never did. But just the same Richard felt guilty at the thought of her spending Christmas by herself in Norfolk.
Then there was the news about his novel. The publisher had not rejected it. (Would that he had; it would have saved a lot of trouble.) Instead he sent it back with several pages of suggestions and a vague promise that if they were followed he might see his way to publishing it in the spring. Marjorie was loyally indignant, Richard secretly aggrieved. How could he face that manuscript again, how possibly endure the tedium of yet again rewriting it?
Finally there was the big decision about Parliament. Somehow the rumour had slipped out and several of his friends had asked him what he was up to. But how he hated having to make decisi
ons! Perhaps he should simply do as Dangerfield suggested, and let Marjorie decide everything for him. She had a far clearer, much more masculine mind than his. But there was less than two weeks now before he decided what could well be his entire future. How could one ever do it?
With so much on his mind, it was a great relief when the bags were packed, the servants organised, and the whole Bellamy ménage was finally en route for Southwold. The children’s sheer excitement was infectious. So was Marjorie’s never failing pleasure at the prospect of seeing her old home again. And in fact Richard’s own attitude to Southwold had mellowed. It was no longer quite that “hostile principality” which it had been for Richard in the past. It could no longer threaten him or make him feel the parvenu intruder he had been so conscious of appearing after his marriage. Instead he could appreciate it now for what it was—a miraculous relic from the past, a piece of English history which could hardly last much longer.
The last time he was there he had seen the telltale signs of imminent decay: some of the lime trees in the great avenue that led up to the house had rotted and been felled, fences were broken, and he noticed that the roof needed mending. Lord Southwold had complained about the dreadful harvests and the failure of his tenants to pay their rents, but what could be done?
“Evict them all, you fool,” his wife had muttered savagely.
“No, my dear, no. That’s simply not the way one behaves. Most have been there for generations. One can’t get rid of them like that.”
As the old coach that met them all at Salisbury station crested the hill by Bordon village, and both the children shouted with excitement at the sight of Southwold in the valley, Richard wondered whether Lord Southwold or his wife had won, and how the fortunes of the great house had fared in his absence.
