Penelope Goes to Portsmouth

by M C Beaton

  Miss Trenton gave Hannah a thin smile.

  ‘And when are you to be married?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘We’ll be married on board ship by the captain,’ said Mr Cato. ‘Won’t we, my sweeting?’

  Miss Trenton tittered.

  Hannah reflected she was glad she had had nothing to do with their romance. She would not be at all surprised if Mr Cato threw his new bride overboard before the ship reached America. ‘We brought you something for the journey,’ went on Mr Cato, handing her a box. ‘Sugarplums.’

  ‘How very kind.’ Hannah cradled the box on her lap. ‘I wish you both all the best. Why, here is Miss Wilkins and Lord Augustus!’

  Penelope handed Hannah a flat box. ‘From both of us, with all our love,’ she said. ‘Open it!’

  Hannah opened up the box. Inside was a pretty little fan, small fans being the current fashion. It had tortoise-shell sticks and a dainty painting of a cavalier and his lady-love.

  ‘How beautiful.’ Hannah turned to the couple. ‘Thank you both very much.’ Other people began to board the coach. More were climbing on the roof.

  ‘Going to be a crowded journey,’ said Lord Augustus. ‘Do not fall into any more adventures, Miss Pym. I fear you have had enough.’

  ‘Out of the way,’ said the guard. ‘We’re moving off.’ He slammed the door of the coach shut. Hannah let down the glass and leaned out of the window. ‘Are you really happy, Miss Wilkins?’ she asked Penelope.

  Penelope stood on tiptoe and kissed Hannah’s cheek. ‘So very happy,’ she said, her eyes shining.

  Comforted, Hannah sat down in her seat as the guard blew a fanfare from the roof and the coach rumbled forward.

  ‘Good-bye,’ shouted the small group in the inn yard, waving their handkerchiefs, and Hannah waved back until the coach turned out into the street and she could see them no more.

  Lord Augustus drove Penelope through the quiet morning streets of Portsmouth. ‘I am amazed you got permission to come along to the inn with me to say good-bye to Miss Pym,’ he said.

  Penelope laughed. ‘It was all Mama’s doing. She told me to go and not to trouble Papa with it. He is quite nervous of her now. But he is reconciled to having you as a son-in-law and is back to bragging to his friends that his daughter is going to marry a lord.’

  ‘My uncle is not reconciled at all,’ said Lord Augustus with a rueful grimace.

  ‘Shall I have the same trouble with your family?’ asked Penelope nervously.

  ‘I have not the faintest idea,’ said Lord Augustus candidly. ‘But it really doesn’t matter, Penelope. We shall not be living with them. I was not brought up like you. I went straight to the army after Eton. I do not think my parents ever had much to do with me from the day I was born. I was given to a wet-nurse, then a nurserymaid, and then a tutor and then school. I cannot say I know my parents at all well. I am not the heir, so they are usually content to leave me to my own devices.’

  ‘And you will not ever be ashamed of me?’ Penelope put a hand on his arm and looked up into his face.

  He reined in his horses and turned to her. ‘I shall always be proud of you,’ he said. ‘Kiss me, Penelope.’

  And so she did. Their embrace was silent and passionate, their emotions holding them so still that a curious sea-gull perched on the carriage rail and watched them with unblinking eyes while a red sun rose over Portsmouth to herald another day.

  Hannah felt comforted by the fact that everyone had come to see her off, and yet Lord Abernethy’s words still burnt in her brain.

  And so she was unaware of the impressed looks of the other passengers when she sat down to meals with a liveried footman at attention behind her chair. There was a pretty young miss on board and a thin clerk who looked at her with hungry eyes. Hannah barely noticed. The Hannah Pym of the down trip would promptly have turned her energies into throwing them together. The Hannah Pym of the up trip was determined to mind her own business from now until the end of time.

  But as the coach eventually rolled into London, Hannah’s spirits began to lift. The very air of London seemed to permeate the carriage, a sort of strung-up excitement.

  Then she thought of Benjamin. What was she to do with him?

  When they alighted in Piccadilly, she hailed a hack and gave her address in Kensington. She turned to face Benjamin. ‘You cannot stay with me,’ she enunciated, forming the words slowly. ‘We will leave our bags and then find a room for you and I will do my best to find you a position.’

  Benjamin shook his head vigorously and looked stubborn. ‘You will do as you are told,’ said Hannah sharply, but Benjamin had turned his head away.

  It was wonderful to see all the familiar sights, thought Hannah. There was Hyde Park Corner with Apsley House, residence of Lord Apsley, the Lord Chancellor, on one side, and the red brick front of St George’s Hospital on the other.

  Then the village of Knightsbridge with its scattered cottages and maypole on the village green. And then over the Knight’s Bridge, a little stone bridge, and so along the muddy road to Kensington.

  Benjamin paid the hack and lifted Hannah’s trunks and a bag of his own. He appeared to have been shopping in Portsmouth. Hannah was amazed at the way Benjamin always seemed to get money from his gambling. She sometimes wondered if the dice he carried in his pocket were loaded.

  She collected her key from the baker and mounted the stairs to her small apartment.

  Benjamin looked around him and then frowned. He took out his notebook and wrote, ‘This will not do for us.’

  ‘It does very well for me,’ retorted Hannah as he studied her lips to find out what she was saying. Benjamin shook his head so hard that a little snowstorm of powder drifted down on to the bare boards of the room. Then he bowed and stalked out.

  Well, really, thought Hannah, half exasperated, half amused. I do believe my high and mighty Benjamin has taken me in dislike because of my humble surroundings. Ungrateful wretch!

  She made herself some tea and sat down to drink it. Slowly her eyelids began to droop. She put down the cup and fell fast asleep.

  She awoke two hours later to find Benjamin standing over her.

  He held out a piece of paper on which he had written, ‘Come. I have found a place for us.’

  Hannah rubbed her eyes and read it again. Then she shook her head. Benjamin thrust another sheet of paper in front of her. On it he had written, ‘A lady of Your Consekwence should not dwel in a Hovel!’

  ‘Benjamin, you are a stubborn man,’ said Hannah. But she was suddenly so delighted that he had come back that she decided to humour him.

  She put on her hat and followed him out. He had a hack waiting. ‘Where are we going?’ mouthed Hannah, but Benjamin would only grin.

  The hack drove back to the West End of London and stopped finally in South Audley Street, off Grosvenor Square. Benjamin must have run mad if he thinks I can live here, thought Hannah, but she followed him from the hack. He produced a large key and opened the street door to a trim white stuccoed house and led the way to the first floor and, producing another key, opened that door and led Hannah inside.

  It was a pretty little flat, tastefully furnished. It consisted of a sitting-room, a parlour, a small kitchen like a cupboard, a bedroom, and then a smaller, cell-like room that Benjamin indicated proudly would be his own.

  It was clean and light and airy. Above all, it was a superbly fashionable address.

  ‘How much?’ demanded Hannah.

  Benjamin wrote down, ‘Eighty pounds a year.’

  ‘Eighty pounds!’ Hannah raised her hands in horror.

  She was about to write down a firm no, when she suddenly paused. She meant to retire to the country the following year. She could perhaps take it for a year. She would be very near Sir George Clarence. She could entertain in a very small way, a tea-party, for example. How could she expect to become a lady living over a bakery in the village of Kensington?

  She looked at Benjamin and nodded reluctantly.

&nb
sp; * * *

  Hannah found she had fallen in love with her new abode. Here she was, right in the centre of fashionable London. She had written out her first cheque – one for the year’s rent – slowly and with great trepidation. Benjamin was installed in his cell. He had found a bed, a table, and a chair. As usual, he refused to accept any money from Hannah, a Hannah who, still smarting from Lord Abernethy’s remarks, complained crossly that her footman must stop treating her like a pauper. But then she suddenly became aware of the social advantage of having a footman. Benjamin could take a letter to Sir George Clarence and inform that gentleman of her return. Hannah wanted to remind him of his offer to take her to the opera, but did not dare.

  Sir George Clarence was reading the newspapers when Benjamin arrived with Hannah’s letter. He read it and then looked up in surprise as his servant told him that Miss Pym’s footman was waiting in the hall in case there was any reply.

  Sir George was at first startled and then assumed that Miss Pym had sent one of her own former colleagues to act as messenger. He remembered clearly having offered to take his brother’s exhousekeeper to the opera. He pulled forward a sheet of paper and then hesitated as he glanced at the address on Hannah’s letter – a very fashionable address. She would not keep much of her legacy at this rate, he thought. To take the housekeeper to Gunter’s was one thing, to appear with her at the opera was another. And yet he had promised, and he remembered the way those odd eyes of hers had glowed with delight.

  He would call on her, he decided. No need to make his mind up right away.

  Hannah broke the seal of his letter impatiently while Benjamin regarded his mistress bursting with curiosity.

  ‘Thank you for going to Sir George Clarence,’ said Hannah. ‘Watch my mouth, Benjamin, and I will tell you how I came to meet him.’

  She described her late employer, her legacy, and the kindness of Sir George. ‘And he is coming here this afternoon, Benjamin! What shall I give him?’

  Benjamin held up his hand and then pointed to his chest, indicating he would handle everything.

  Sir George had said he would call at three. By half past two, Hannah was seated and dressed, and in an agony of anticipation. She was wearing a white muslin gown with a blue spot under a Turkish vest of black velvet. On her sandy hair was a Turkish turban made of blue muslin with a falling edge fringed in gold. She had a pair of the latest shoes on her elegant feet, thin slippers of blue kid, without heels. She began to speak aloud, practising her vowels. No one said ‘obleege’ any more; it was now oblige. No one said ‘Lonnon’ these days; all pronounced it London.

  And then she heard a knock at the street door and Benjamin pattering lightly down the stairs to answer it, Benjamin who had appeared that morning in a new pair of thin leather pumps to replace the heavy shoes Mr Cato had bought him.

  Sir George’s first uneasy feeling was that Miss Pym had joined the ranks of the Fashionable Impure. First, there was the footman, not a colleague, but obviously Hannah’s servant. Then there was the elegant flat. And then there was Miss Pym, a Miss Pym on whom the fashionable clothes sat well. Before, he reflected, she had looked as if she had only borrowed them for the day.

  But the minute she began to speak, he knew that Miss Pym was as respectable as ever. She was so open, so frank, so obviously delighted to see him. The day was chilly and a fire blazed on the clean hearth. The footman came in and put down a plate of thin sandwiches and a plate of cakes and then proceeded to make a pot of tea in an elegant pot and pour it into delicate cups.

  Hannah wondered uneasily how Benjamin had come by the china.

  Sir George pressed Hannah to tell him of her latest adventures and then leaned back in his chair and listened in amazement to a tale of hanging, wrecked carriage, kidnapped footman, burnt house and near drowning.

  ‘My dear Miss Pym,’ he exclaimed at last, ‘surely you have had your fill of adventures?’

  ‘I thought I had,’ said Hannah, thinking of her depression after Lord Abernethy’s call. ‘But I shall go on a little journey next time, perhaps to Brighton. Oh, to see the sea again, Sir George!’

  Sir George looked at her with affection and decided on the spot that he would take her to the opera after all. She amused him as no other woman had ever done and he often found the days of his retirement long and wearisome.

  ‘I have not forgotten my invitation to the opera,’ he said. ‘Would tomorrow night be too soon? I can call for you at eight.’

  Hannah’s odd eyes glowed. ‘I would love to go,’ she said, and then, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized she had nothing to wear. Fortunately, Sir George immediately took his leave and did not notice that Hannah was becoming more depressed by the minute.

  ‘Benjamin, what am I to do?’ wailed Hannah. ‘He has asked me to the opera and I have not a suitable gown. I took some of my late employer’s wife’s clothes – with permission, of course, but I did not imagine at the time that I would be going to places like the opera house.’

  Benjamin looked at her, his head a little on one side, his eyes bright and intelligent.

  ‘And where did you find the china, Benjamin?’

  The footman wrote down, ‘Borrowed.’

  ‘From whom?’ asked Hannah.

  He wrote down, ‘Butler in household near here.’

  ‘I am surprised you know any servants at all,’ said Hannah. ‘For it is my belief that before Lady Carsey you had not worked in service.’

  Benjamin looked hurt.

  ‘No, it is not an insult,’ said Hannah, ‘and you are the best of fellows. But you must remember I am a servant myself, or was one until recently. The women are all very well, but footmen can be lazy and frivolous and not very bright.’ Her thoughts flew to Mrs Clarence. The footman she had run off with had been very handsome and charming but certainly not very intelligent. Then her thoughts returned abruptly to her present problem and she sighed.

  ‘I shall try to think of something, Benjamin, but I fear I am going to have to refuse Sir George’s invitation.’

  Benjamin went silently away and cleaned and packed the borrowed china and took it to the butler two doors away. He had gambled with the butler and then asked for the loan of good china in lieu of payment. The butler looked immensely relieved to get it back.

  The footman stood in the butler’s little pantry and slowly tossed the dice up and down. ‘No, you don’t,’ said the butler. ‘Once bitten …’ A bell clanged from upstairs. ‘That’s my lord and lady,’ exclaimed the butler. ‘Going out.’

  Benjamin waited in the pantry for a few moments and then went out of the servants’ door and climbed the area steps. Lord and Lady French, the butler’s employers, were getting into their carriage. Benjamin studied Lady French with interest. She was a thin, spare, middle-aged woman, very fashionably dressed.

  He darted back down the stairs. The butler exclaimed with annoyance when he returned. ‘It’s no use hanging around here, fellow. I think them dice you got was loaded.’

  Benjamin wrote down, ‘Use any dice you like.’

  The butler hesitated and then grinned. ‘Got an hour to spare,’ he said. ‘But my dice, this time.’

  After an hour in the servants’ hall, the butler clutched his wig and moaned, ‘I must ha’ been mad. That’s half a year’s pay you’ve got off o’ me.’

  Benjamin smiled at him gently and wrote down, ‘I need to borrow something else. Lend it to me and I’ll forget your debt.’

  Hannah awoke the next day wondering why she felt so low. Then she remembered. She would need to pluck up courage and tell Sir George she could not go to the opera.

  She sat up in bed and then stared in surprise at what lay across the bottom of it.

  She slowly got up and went and picked up the splendid opera gown that was lying there. It was of rich plum-coloured velvet ornamented with gold embroidery. Beside it lay an opera cloak of gold lamé.

  She went into Benjamin’s room and jerked her head as a signal that he was t
o follow her.

  Benjamin, in his shirt-sleeves, breeches and bare feet, and yawning loudly, trailed after her.

  Hannah pointed to the clothes. Benjamin disappeared and returned with a sheet of paper on which he had already written that he had managed to borrow the clothes but was sworn to secrecy as to where they came from and, no, he had not stolen them.

  Hannah picked up the gown and held it against her. She somehow knew it would be a perfect fit. Her hand smoothed the beautiful material, and all in that moment, she decided she did not care how Benjamin had come by it. She would go to the opera.

  The opera was a blaze of light and jewels. Hannah felt just as nervous as if she were about to go on stage. She felt Sir George was looking overwhelmingly grand in a silk coat of dark blue with diamond buttons, a fall of lace at his throat, and a dress-sword with a jewelled hilt at his hip. His white hair gleamed silver in the candlelight and his blue eyes were warm and merry.

  Hannah was in such a state of rapture, combined with acute nervousness, that she thought she might faint. She sat down very gingerly on the edge of her chair and looked around her with dazed eyes.

  The opera was an Italian one by Giovanni Pergolesi called La Serva Padrona, which Sir George explained meant ‘The Maidservant Turned Mistress’.

  Practically all of society went to the opera to see each other and to be seen. Sir George reflected it was a novelty to entertain a lady who had come to see what was on the stage. From the moment the curtain rose on the first act, Hannah was enchanted with the frothy plot of the maid-servant who tricks her master into marrying her. To her relief it was sung in English, so she could follow every word. Lord Abernethy’s harsh words were a thing of the past. Hannah had recovered all her child-like capacity of treasuring the moment. The voices of the opera singers coiled round her heart. At the interval, she was so proud of being escorted by such a fine gentleman as Sir George that she felt her happiness was close to tears.

  But her evening did not end with the opera. There was a ball afterwards. Hannah knew how to dance, as the servants at Thornton Hall, when Mrs Clarence had been in residence, had enjoyed almost as many dances in the servants’ hall as their betters did abovestairs.