by M C Beaton
“Encroaching little thing,” said Lady Mainwaring, unfurling her parasol.
Kitty flared up, surprising herself at her own burst of temper. “If becoming socially acceptable means becoming a snob, I would like to stop right now,” she raged.
But Emily only smiled. “You’ll see, my dear. Just wait and you’ll see.”
Percy’s father was a retired Indian army colonel and his family home abounded in brass mementos of the East, from coffee tables to gongs. The colonel, a middle-aged man with terrifying mustaches and angry-looking broken veins, emerged briefly to welcome them and tell them that this tea business was a lot of rubbish, give him a good Scotch any day, what, but his wife would look after them.
Mrs. Barlowe-Smellie was a thin, anemic woman with wispy hair and a breathless voice. She ushered them out into the garden, chattering busily. “So kind of you to… so busy… Indian or Chinese… ? you must try these… delicious… I get them from… where is Percy… ? introduce Mrs. Betty Simpson… Mrs. Edith Haughton… Mrs…. oh, dear… and James Dubois… not French… Somerset Dubois… and Henry ah… oh dear… there!”
She sat down triumphantly at the tea table and started dispensing cups with the satisfied air of someone who had just coped with a difficult situation.
Her son Percy breezed in and his eyes alighted on Kitty with a look of gleeful malice. “Well, well, Baroness,” he said, coming to sit beside her. “How’s things in Hampstead?”
“I don’t know,” said Kitty. “I haven’t been back there.”
“Quite right,” said Percy rudely. “Cut the old connections.”
“I have no intention of cutting my old connections,” said Kitty tremulously, thinking of Hetty.
“For heavens’ sakes, drink your tea, Percy, and stop chattering,” snapped Lady Mainwaring. But Percy was in full cry.
“I’ve always wondered what you lot get up to in those little houses on the Heath. Bags of middle-class sin behind the old lace curtains, what?” He grinned, winked at the company, and helped himself to cream and sugar.
It was now or never. Kitty said in a very loud voice, “I think you are an absolutely horrid young man!”
Percy blushed. Everyone stared. Percy’s mother surprisingly flew to Kitty’s rescue. “Quite right, my dear… tell him so myself… cheeky, very cheeky… pinches housemaids’ bottoms… very hard to get good girls these days… bad, yes… good, no… cook got drunk… cooking sherry… but it’s the principle of the thing I always say…,” she ended happily.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and burst out talking at once about the age-old problem of servants.
“Very good,” said Lady Mainwaring in a whisper to Kitty. “Now carry on as if nothing had happened.”
Percy, to Kitty’s surprise, began to talk to her in almost deferential tones about a play he had seen the night before. The rest of the company cut into his conversation, from time to time, asking Kitty how she was enjoying her new home and asking when her husband would be returning to London.
Kitty forced herself to answer their questions at some length, instead of just saying “yes” and “no.”
When she and Lady Mainwaring rose to take their departure, Mrs. Barlowe-Smellie asked if they could come to dinner the following week.
“I’m afraid not,” said Lady Mainwaring, drawing on her long gloves. “We are both in the need of sea air. We shall probably be in Hadsea or somewhere.”
Mrs. Barlowe-Smellie expressed her disappointment in her usual fragmented way. “So very, very sorry…. Seaside… ? dear me… must be… well, you know… time of year… mashers… common people… tut… common… tut… but healthy… ozone… sea-bathing… prawns. I do so love prawns,” she added, looking quite startled to find a complete sentence emerging from her lips.
When they were seated in the carriage, Lady Mainwaring turned to her companion. “You just slew dragon number two. Did you notice how polite Percy became? He won’t trouble you again. Now, wasn’t it worth the effort?”
Kitty nodded, feeling a faint, warm glow of satisfaction.
“The next step,” said her companion, “is to remove ourselves from London before your husband arrives.”
“Perhaps he will be glad,” cried Kitty. “Perhaps the marriage will suit him better this way.”
“Nonsense,” replied Emily Mainwaring. “You are newly married. People will keep asking for his wife. His wife isn’t there. His pride will be hurt. Be patient!”
Kitty reflected that her new friend always seemed to be too sure of everything. Now Hetty, she would understand the uncertainty of it all.
“I would like to visit Hetty before we leave,” she ventured timidly. “You know, the old friend I met this afternoon at the zoo.”
Lady Mainwaring looked at her in silence for a minute. Then she said slowly, “Yes, by all means. We have no engagements for tomorrow afternoon and I wish to work in my garden. But why don’t you go? You can use the carriage.”
Kitty looked surprised. She had expected an argument. She could hardly wait to tell Hetty all her news.
Hetty was as excited as Kitty. The next day when Lady Mainwaring’s smart carriage stopped outside the Carson home in Gospel Oak, Hetty ran out to meet Kitty, dancing with excitement.
“Oh, Kitty! Such a smart carriage and a groom as well as a coachman,” she shrilled. Kitty looked at the impassive back of the coachman and whispered, “Can’t we go into the house, Hetty? I’ve such a lot to tell you.”
“Go into the house!” exclaimed Hetty. “When you’ve got this spanking carriage and all? We’ll go for a drive. Wait till I get my hat.” And she ran back into the house before Kitty could reply.
She soon bounced out again wearing a huge purple toque on her glossy hair. Hetty, who had a generous allowance from Mr. Carson, had bought the hat for just such an occasion as this, despite the protests from her more sensible mother that it was headgear only suitable for a dowager.
“Where would you like to go?” asked Kitty.
“There’s a darling tearoom in Belsize Park,” bubbled Hetty, “with simply scrumptious pastries.”
Although she was a baker’s daughter, Hetty had a seemingly endless appetite for pastry.
Kitty nodded, anxious to please her friend, but she could not help feeling disappointed. Her beloved Heath looked beautiful in the summer sunshine and she had imagined walking arm in arm with Hetty, away from the crowds, sharing confidences.
Her heart sank when they arrived at the tearoom. It was crowded with people, but the determined Hetty managed to find a table in the center of the room.
“Here’s that very spot, Baroness,” she said in a loud voice.
“What are you calling me ‘Baroness’ for?” whispered Kitty. Everyone was staring at them.
“You must try the pastries here, Baroness,” roared Hetty, enjoying the sensation. “’Member when we was—were—at school together, how we used to eat them?”
“Really, Hetty! Keep your voice down and stop calling me ‘Baroness,’” said poor Kitty, her face flushing under the curious gaze of the rest of the people in the tearoom.
Hetty pouted. “You’re no fun, Kitty. After all, you are a real-live Baroness and what’s the point of being it if nobody knows?”
Unabashed, Hetty went on for the next terrible hour in the same way. It was “Baroness” this and “Baroness” that until Kitty felt ready to die with mortification. The only small grain of comfort to be had was that Hetty had assumed what she fondly believed to be an Oxford accent so no one could understand what she was saying. “Look at that dahling child with the fah hah, Baroness,” she screamed, pointing to a blonde-haired infant at the next table.
Kitty could bear it no longer. “I must leave now, Hetty. I’ve got to get ready for the opera this evening.”
Hetty’s wide eyes gleamed. “Are you going with your husband, Baron Reamington?” she shrieked.
“No,” whispered Kitty, hoping by the very softness of her voice to bring down the str
ident tone of Hetty’s. “That’s what I want to talk to—”
“You’re probably going with one of your friends. A duke or an earl, I dessay.”
Kitty paid for the tea and almost shoved her friend out of the tearoom and into the carriage. Hetty’s forehead was glistening with sweat under the heavy velvet toque. “There,” she said in more her normal voice, settling back in the carriage with a sigh of satisfaction. “That’ll give all those snobbish old cats in Hampstead something to talk about. Hetty Carson having tea with a real-live Baroness!”
But by the time they reached her home in Gospel Oak, Hetty began to feel nervous. Perhaps she had overdone things a bit. She hugged Kitty. “I’m sorry, Kitty. I got so excited at seeing you again, I didn’t give you a chance to talk. Please remember, your old friend Hetty is always here if ever you need help.”
Kitty’s heart was touched. She hugged her friend back and forgave her everything. “I’ll come to call as soon as I get back, I promise,” said Kitty.
Hetty climbed down from the carriage with a quick look up and down the street to see which of the neighbors was watching. She opened her mouth to point out that she could call at Kitty’s new home, but shrewdly decided that her friend had had enough for one afternoon.
Kitty was very thoughtful on the road home but still loyal to Hetty. She had been awful in the tearoom but Hetty was a warm-hearted girl, she decided, and worth twice as much as any of her new-found society friends.
But Kitty still had to admit to herself that she was very disappointed. She had a longing to catch and reorganize some of her old life before she left for the sea. A woman trudged along the pavement, followed by a retinue of grubby children that marked out the burden of her yearly pregnancies. Kitty suddenly thought of the Pugsleys in Camden Town. Now that she was rich, she could surely do something better for them than serve out soup.
Feeling quite cheerful, she outlined her plan to Lady Mainwaring. Her ladyship looked at her young friend in some dismay. “It’s very nice to play Father Christmas, Kitty, but don’t get carried away. Start off helping them in a very small way and see how they can cope with it.”
Kitty went off happily to make her plans and Lady Mainwaring stared at the photograph of her late husband in despair. Sir James Mainwaring had been a great philanthropist—in the drawing room. He wrote pamphlets and held forth, at length, on great schemes to help “the great unwashed.” One militant lady had actually suggested, one day, that he should actually go out and do something about it. Sir James had stalked off to his study in a sulk and the offending lady was never invited again. But the barb had rankled. Sir James had at last gone on an organized tour of the East End slums. It had caused a lot of publicity.
A photographer from the Daily Mail had asked him to pose holding a very dirty baby. Within two days, Sir James had contracted diphtheria and died.
Lady Mainwaring hoped Kitty knew what she was doing. Then she shrugged. There were some things that Kitty would just have to find out for herself.
Kitty had decided what to do. She remembered the Pugsleys’ worn, chipped, and battered furniture. She would buy, and have delivered, new furniture to the house in Camden Town. With an energy and resolution that surprised her, she descended on Harridges in Knightsbridge and ordered a quantity of sturdy oak furniture and bedding to be delivered that day. The next day she received a letter by the first post.
“Dere, Miss,” she read. “Thanking you for the furniteerr. We ar having a party on Satterday in your honor at nine in the eevning. Pleese to cum. Yrs. Freda Pugsley.”
Lady Mainwaring tried to stop Kitty from attending, but Kitty would not change her mind. She longed to see all that sparkling furniture lighting up the Pugsleys’ dingy home.
On Saturday morning she called on her mother and Lady Henley to tell them of her plans. Lady Henley was outraged. Exploding in a cloud of wine-biscuit crumbs, she told Kitty that the whole scheme was madness. Mrs. Harrison, however, seemed indifferent. “Go if you want,” she shrugged, “but I would like a word with you in private before you leave.”
Kitty followed her into the study. Mrs. Harrison’s hair-pins seemed particularly agitated and popped out of her head like tiny bullets.
“Now, Kitty,” said Mrs. Harrison, fixing her with a steely glare. “Has your marriage been consummated?”
Kitty blushed and shook her head.
“Good,” said her mother unexpectedly. “I have prayed night and day for forgiveness. When I think of my pure daughter in the arms of that lecher…”
“But, Mama, he has only been a little wild in his youth like most young men,” protested Kitty.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” spluttered Mrs. Harrison. “Men! Dirty, filthy beasts. And that includes your father. His great hairy hands and his wet mouth and…” Mrs. Harrison put a trembling hand to her mouth to stop her own tirade.
Kitty got to her feet. “I admit my marriage has not begun well, Mama. But I love my husband and—and I know I can make him love me.”
She waited a minute in silence but her mother’s glittering eyes were fixed on the middle distance and her thin mouth was working with emotion. Kitty backed out of the door and went in search of Lady Henley.
Her ladyship was playing patience with one hand and eating asparagus with the other. A small river of butter dripped unheeded onto the cards.
Kitty sat down and watched, fascinated, as a new tributary of butter made its way down Lady Henley’s neck and then joined up with another little river to form a mainstream that plunged into the cleavage and, she supposed, down into the stays. Kitty remembered the March Hare—“It was the best butter”—and started to giggle.
Lady Henley eyed her with disfavor. “You’re getting as dotty as your mother,” she remarked.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” said Kitty. “Mama seems a little—well—strange.”
“She’ll get over it—I hope,” said Lady Henley. “She’s been torturing herself with remorse ever since your wedding.”
“But I love my husband,” said Kitty.
“Let’s hope she realizes that,” said Lady Henley. “But at the moment, she’s going about wringing her hands and talking about lily-white maidens in the paws of lecherous beasts. Got the doctor to look at her, you know. He says she’ll be all right with a bit of rest and quiet.”
Kitty smiled with relief and went home to prepare for her expedition to Camden Town. Lady Mainwaring had insisted that a bodyguard of two footmen accompany her in the carriage. But when they arrived at the Pugsleys’, Kitty begged the footmen to remain in the carriage. “I’m sure the Pugsleys would be embarrassed,” she said. The coachman turned around. “Well, your Ladyship, I’ve got to keep my horses moving. I don’t want them standing around too long.”
“Call back for me in an hour,” said Kitty. Really, the servants were worse than their masters! What harm could come to her at the Pugsleys’? She had known them all her life.
Apart from having ten children, the Pugsleys also took in boarders and the three-story house seemed to be jammed with noisy people. Smelling strongly of gin, Mrs. Freda Pugsley ushered Kitty into the parlor. The friends, relatives, and family gave her three hearty cheers and Kitty blushed with pleasure. She accepted a glass of sherry and sat down and realized that the furniture was the same.
The armchair she was sitting in still reeked of cat and old baby vomit. The sofa was still spilling its innards on the floor and one leg of the table was still propped up with a copy of the Bible.
Everyone, including the Pugsley children, seemed to have been drinking a lot. Their faces were flushed, their voices raucous, flickering in the candlelight of the tenement, like a scene from Hogarth. The father, Mr. Bob Pugsley, who had been unemployed as long as Mrs. Pugsley could remember, was wearing the jacket of his soup-stained suit open to display a new waistcoat. Then he hitched up his-trousers to display his new suspenders. “Let’s see yer drawers, Bob,” yelled one of the women and everyone sc
reamed with laughter.
Kitty blushed and began to pray for the arrival of her carriage. But what had happened to the furniture?
Bob Pugsley was calling for music. A female of uncertain years who seemed to be some sort of aunt to the young Pugsleys, took up her stance beside the piano, and, to the accompaniment of much tinny battering of the keys by another female relative, began to sing a music-hall song.
The song dealt with the problems of a young miss who had lost her way on the railway system and was appealing to a porter for help, explaining that she had “never ’ad ’er ticket punched before.”
What there was about this to cause such gales of salacious laughter was beyond poor Kitty.
She noticed one of the quieter boarders standing next to her and, under cover of the noise, asked him what had happened to all the new furniture.
“They sold it, your La’ship,” he said.
“But why?” asked poor Kitty.
“Because money for the drink and the dogs means more to this lot than new furniture,” he replied.
It couldn’t be true! Kitty was nearly in tears. “But I’ve visited them almost every Sunday since I was a child and I have never seen them with any drink.”
The boarder looked at her as if she were a Hottentot. “Course you didn’t! They does their drinking on Saturday. Never on Sundays. Very religious, is Mrs. Pugsley.”
Kitty glanced at the watch on her bosom. Half an hour to wait. Please God, let something happen to get me out of here, she prayed.
Suddenly, through the noise and haze of cigar smoke and the capering figures, Kitty saw the dirty net curtains going up in an instant blaze.
Everyone began to scream at once and fight to get out of the door. But the parlor door was locked. Bob Pugsley was trying to push them back so that he could get space to charge the door but no one was listening. A woman’s hair caught on fire and she screamed in agony. Flames were dancing around the room and setting the swinging skirts of the terrified women alight.
Kitty began to feel herself falling as the guests swayed backward and forward. Her skirt caught fire and she beat at it with her fingers. The press closed around her again and the room crackled and danced and swayed before her terrified eyes. Then there was a blessed rush of air from the door. Throwing themselves into the room, the footmen grabbed Kitty and unceremoniously dragged her out into the street where they rolled her on the ground and beat out the flames.
