The New Countess

by Fay Weldon

  ‘You are holding the children as hostages, then?’ his Lordship asked.

  ‘My dear,’ said his wife, ‘of course I am not, but put it how you wish. So far as I am concerned the longer Minnie stays away the better. She has such strange ideas about bringing up children. With any luck she will wander back to Chicago, keep her mother company and leave us alone.’

  ‘But then Arthur will have no wife.’

  ‘Arthur has no need of a wife,’ said Isobel. ‘He has his company, his toys, his automobiles. The boy takes after his grandfather. Silas had his coal business and any number of sons. He abandoned them, made do with the occasional company of my mother, and was perfectly happy. So was I.’

  ‘Your father was not a landowner,’ said his Lordship. ‘I can only hope that when I am gone Arthur remembers that he is.’

  ‘Of course he will,’ said Isobel. ‘He has been not just born but reared to the title. I have made sure of that, my dear. But in the meanwhile I have other things to think about. The King and his entourage will be here on Friday the fifteenth of December, only four weeks to the day.’

  Isobel was punishing him, he was sure of that, for sins long past and forgotten by him. Men forgot easily: women did not. The excessive time, energy, money and emotion now being spent on Dilberne Court was no doubt her revenge for his past misdemeanours. Every new sin, such as inviting the King to stay without asking her first, brought to mind all the others. Women all did this kind of thing, but did not know they were doing it. He supposed she would have to be indulged. But it was becoming noticeably expensive.

  She seemed surprisingly casual about Minnie’s delinquency. It was all very well for Silas to have abandoned his sons but Silas was not a peer of the Realm. He had no social responsibilities other than to God, King, Country and his family. Arthur was a Viscount with a duty to an estate. What went on between Arthur and Minnie was neither here nor there: she was his wife and that was that. Arthur must get her back.

  Billy O’Brien’s business had, thank God, survived the last fall in livestock prices, which as Baum had predicted were rising again. Minnie would have her inheritance. Besides, he was fond of the girl. When she smiled, she meant it. When she looked unhappy, that’s what she was. She was rather like Carmen in this particular respect. His son, in Robert’s opinion, was out of his bloody mind to have upset his wife, and then not gone after her at once to bring her back. Arthur, when it came to women, was deaf and blind to their needs. He seemed not to grasp that women, especially American women, took matters of romantic infidelity to heart. What to a man was over and done with and forgotten in an hour was to a woman a matter of untold significance. Infidelity in a man was of no importance, in a woman it certainly was. The law recognized that an energetic husband would always require interludes outside the marriage bed – men needed fulfilment or their health suffered. If a woman did the same it was reason to divorce her. Her very soul would be involved, her loyalty, and thus the paternity of her children forever doubted.

  King Edward could do as he wanted, because his paramours didn’t really count in the greater scheme of things. Bertie liked keeping the company of intelligent women but obviously he would never leave the Queen, any more than he, Dilberne, would leave Isobel. Carmen was from a hot continent where passion ruled, not reason. In temperate Britain, as one educated the people so one extended the franchise. It was a great experiment. He himself was in favour of giving educated women the vote: the best of them were sensible enough. He gave up worrying about Arthur, prudently changed the subject, and asked Isobel what she thought of women’s suffrage.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ she enquired. ‘I hope you do not want simply to pick a quarrel. You are in a very strange mood. I know you are in favour and I am not. Your lot talked out the franchise bill and I am not at all sorry. Women have the municipal vote and should be happy with that; all they do anyway is vote as their husbands do, as has been proved time and time again. And if Rosina wants the parliamentary vote,’ she went on, ‘it is surely a very good reason for us to be against it. She is a born contrarian. She would vote against her own interests, her own class, just for the sake of it, the better to annoy. She prefers revolution to order, socialism to freedom.’

  ‘So do many men,’ said his Lordship, mildly. It was sadly true, he could see, as so many argued, that even clever women were inclined by their natures to use emotion and matters related to family in argument rather than reason.

  ‘The only thing that does attract me to female suffrage,’ she said, ‘is that your friend the King is so against it.’

  She was not at all herself; it was as he thought, she was still upset. Not just about the King and Mrs Keppel descending upon them, but at Rosina’s betrayal. She had expected Rosina to return within days, begging for forgiveness and asking to be let back into the family home, but Rosina had not. Now Minnie had done the same. Isobel would rather break than bend. He had a sudden longing for Carmen’s company. It never occurred to Carmen to be spiteful or resentful, let alone wish or not wish for female suffrage. So he held his tongue, and refrained from saying that what worried the King was that women would tend to vote out of petty spite, or because they liked the looks of a candidate irrespective of his policies. Women bet on horses because of their colour. They were irrational, the King complained.

  How strange that he and Isobel had bred such disparate children. Rosina, so ‘difficult’ yet full of concern for others; so long, as Isobel would have it, as they were not her nearest and dearest. Arthur so apparently amiable, yet so indifferent to the feelings of others. And Isobel, so ill at ease with both of her children, but seeing an opportunity to make a better go of things with her grandchildren.

  Robert thought that as soon as he had seen to one or two important matters of State he would go in search of Arthur and give him some fatherly advice. In the meanwhile, to Hell with the female franchise; disunity in the party over Free Trade was splitting the government apart. The other Arthur – Balfour – was also in need of friendship and support. Balfour would probably stay on as leader of the party, but would lose the premiership to the amiable Campbell-Bannerman, mollifier to end all mollifiers. In this quality Robert felt himself out-ranked, and was therefore slightly put out.

  What Happened Next

  …at The Gatehouse

  Arthur was busy in his Gatehouse office when his father called by. It was a busy day; he and his two new secretaries were going through potential mileages per gallon for the Jehu IV. Thanks to Robert’s recent injection of funds, the Jehu IV was already on the drawing board: it was to be a heavy carriage to be used over land, not only for the transport of stock and goods, but for the convenience of the Guns – the ability to bring in an extra keeper and a dog or two at short notice would be much appreciated on any shoot, as would easy access to the duck pits and snipe marshes where horses found difficulty – and an extra ten minutes in bed on a frosty morning was always welcome.

  Car transport meant no more worries about horses bolting and dogs barking, putting the golden plover and the wood pigeons to flight, and disturbing the nesting pheasants. So long as Arthur got the exhaust problem under control, so that the Jehu IVs moved quietly, the use of cars rather than horses would greatly improve the pleasure of the day. His father, in search of the finest shoot, was finally an enthusiastic convert to the automobile, though rather appalled by Arthur’s suggestion of night shoots – you could drive hares and rabbits for anything up to a quarter of a mile in the glare of oxyacetylene lights before securing your quarry and blasting off without so much as leaving the car. Or even get them with your tyres.

  ‘God forbid,’ said the Earl. ‘Then the poor creatures would be better fit for soup than a roast! Never!’

  Now it seemed what Robert really wanted to talk about was Minnie, and made no bones about it. He was gratified to see that of Arthur’s two secretaries one was a young man, Oliver Hawkley, a grammar-school lad with a head for statistics, and the other an extremely plain married woman, Effi
e Firbank, who had worked for the Daimler firm in Coventry, pleasant and competent enough but flat-chested. He suspected Arthur had inherited his own tastes for the voluptuous, and Effie was anything but. The receptionist, Marion Barnes, had been a parlourmaid at Dilberne Court until she’d married one of Arthur’s engineers, and was already well trained in answering doors in a courteous yet distant way. There was no likelihood of trouble here. Perhaps Arthur had learned his lesson.

  Arthur had indeed been thoroughly disconcerted by his encounter with Miss Braintree. She’d written an appreciative, even flattering piece in the Mirror, two whole columns and a photograph of him by Tom Grant which even Isobel acknowledged made him look most dashing; and though she viewed askance the phrase ‘The Motoring Viscount’, she had shown the article to her friends. A letter had come from Miss Braintree repeating her request to be his secretary so she could finish her novel, to which he had firmly replied, ‘No.’ A dozen or so other letters, all in an ill-educated hand, had come from female members of the public asking to meet, or work for, him; he had consulted Inspector Strachan about these and Strachan had advised him to ignore them. ‘Fans’, as he called them, could be dangerous – it was no accident, he said, that the term derived from the word fanatic. The King was in as much danger from those who loved him for his splendour as from those who hated him for his privilege and wealth.

  But in another respect Arthur’s life seemed oddly empty. He missed Minnie. Sleeping in the Gatehouse was all very well. He was away from his mother’s obsessive renovations, and he could concentrate on his work and not have to waste time in eating, female chatter, talk of children and fashion; but sleeping alone was chilly now that Autumn had arrived. Strachan had arranged for locks to be put on all possible windows at the Gatehouse, and the hired workmen had managed to break a few panes of glass in so doing and had not replaced them. He was reluctant to alert Isobel – it would probably end up with her deciding the Gatehouse had to be rebuilt altogether – it was the kind of thing Minnie could have organized without fuss or bother. And a man, he realized, needed domestic companionship; someone to sleep next to, to talk to about nothing in particular, to listen to him and admire, to join gentle forces with him against his mother’s forays. Minnie was always tact itself. She had served so many purposes. Perhaps his anger with her had been misplaced. He had expected her to come running back with her tail between her legs, but she had not.

  He went up to the Court twice a week to say good-night to the children at bath time. It occurred to him that perhaps they were missing their mother, although they were well enough looked after by Nanny under his own mother’s supervision, and Isobel had assured him they were perfectly happy. But in the past couple of weeks Edgar and Connor had seemed a little subdued; Connor had even asked him where his mummy was, and Edgar’s little mouth had turned down in an unmanly way. Connor had blisters on his ankles. Arthur had queried whether the child’s shoes were too tight and Nanny had said tight shoes were good for growing feet. They hardened the skin. He asked Isobel if this was the case.

  ‘Don’t interfere, Arthur, Nanny knows what she is doing. You’re as bad as Minnie, worrying about this, that and the other,’ she had replied.

  Whatever was going on with Strachan was good for her complexion but not good for her mood. She seemed perpetually irritated. Minnie would just have got in the Jehu, gone down to Brighton, bought new shoes and thrown away the old ones. And surely Nanny was too old for the job? His mother saw only what she wanted to see. Minnie saw what was really going on. He missed her body and her hair and the shape of her, the curl of her foot against his when he woke. And then he’d leap out of bed, when he should have stayed with her, unable to resist the call of the Jehu. Sins of omission were as bad as sins of commission. He had resisted Miss Braintree but it was not enough.

  ‘I am not going to last for ever,’ said his father the Earl. They were in the long, top room of the Gatehouse. Arthur poured him a liberal glass of twenty-year-old Highland single malt. These days Arthur did not drink himself, claiming it clouded his brain, but his father took it as given that all discussions were lubricated by requisite amounts of good whisky or wine. ‘These things must be talked about. I do not know what goes on between you and Minnie and I would prefer not to, but one day you will be an Earl, responsible for a large estate and all the people and properties that go with that inheritance. You in your turn will pass it on to Edgar and his children.’

  ‘I am all too aware of this, Pater,’ said Arthur. ‘But need we talk about it now?’

  ‘Yes, we must,’ said his Lordship. ‘You have brought it on yourself. You have let Minnie go, and the estate needs her.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Arthur. ‘After you are gone Mama can take over.’

  ‘Your mother is good at fashion and high society: she does not understand the needs of people or land.’

  ‘But Pater, neither do I,’ said Arthur. ‘I understand the needs of the automobile, petrol and oil, water and air, but not, or so I am told by Minnie, of human beings. I find their emotions very trying, but why shouldn’t I? I can produce heirs a-plenty, it seems, but when it comes to wheat and forestry, it is quite true, I am at a loss.’

  ‘Drollery aside, Arthur,’ he said, ‘when I am gone, Minnie, not your mother, must take over the estate. We chose wisely there. She has a good practical head on her shoulders and is not easily bullied. Your mother must retire gracefully as Dowager Countess to the Dower House – which she can renovate to her heart’s content. You must go after Minnie and get her back, before she wanders off.’

  ‘She won’t wander off,’ said Arthur. ‘She loves me. She is safely with Rosina.’

  ‘It is in the nature of women to wander off,’ said the Earl. ‘Even more than it is of men. They go in search of love; men go in search of sex.’

  ‘But I didn’t,’ protested Arthur.

  ‘The facts of the matter are neither here nor there,’ said the Earl.

  It seemed to Arthur very wrong that his own father should be talking to him about such things. It was embarrassing. Was his father referring to his mother and Inspector Strachan – or did he perhaps himself have some secret of his own? There had been a time when the Earl had been infatuated with Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, or so it had been rumoured.

  ‘Even if any liaison had occurred,’ said Arthur, ‘Minnie should be man enough to accept it. The Queen does not worry about the King’s infidelities. He had a whole loose box of mistresses at his own Coronation. And you and Mama are receiving Mrs Keppel in December for the shoot.’

  ‘Very much against Isobel’s wishes,’ said Robert. ‘The mood of the people has changed, and your mother is as ever sensitive to such things. Even Bertie no longer takes Mrs Keppel about in public. What matters is discretion. Women take romantic affairs to heart as men do not. The kindest thing is to keep them in ignorance of what goes on. There are a few highly passionate women about, true, but they, like intelligent women, are a minority and society both disapproves of, and pities them. Your sister Rosina, for one, is too intelligent for her own contentment and happiness.’

  ‘You are not suggesting Rosina is highly passionate?’ Arthur asked, shocked.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Robert, and then shocked his son even more, ‘though I suspect she may be as interested in women as in men. You have no idea, it seems, of what company your wife may be keeping. She is your wife, for better or worse, mother of the future Earl of Dilberne, and Minnie is a great deal better than most. Go and get her back.’

  So Arthur left Firbank and Hawkley in charge, and went to London in search of his wife to bring her back. He did so with joy, relief and anticipation in his heart.

  Part 3

  Tessa Returns

  7th November 1905

  Minnie’s mother Tessa sailed into Liverpool on the SS Carpania, the new Cunard liner. It was as luxurious and comfortable as the advertisements claimed, and with its two steam turbines and three propellers made a quick crossing if a rough one. It was, a
fter all, Winter: the wind was wild and the waves tumultuous. Tessa too had come in search of Minnie, but with anxiety in her heart. This is the fate of parents everywhere. The birth of a child is a lifetime’s sentence to anxiety.

  Fathers are perhaps less sensitive to it than mothers. Tessa’s husband Billy O’Brien had pointed out that no one took the trip in Winter if they could help it, but since his wife seemed helpless in the face of her own nature, he would have to put up with being without her for a couple of weeks. When the piglet squeals all must rush. It was the nature of the beast. He would come with her but unhappy marriages were female matters. He gave Tessa an open cheque book: if need be she must bring Minnie and the children back, but only if need be. He was an old man: he had bruised his knuckles once rescuing Minnie from the scoundrel of her choice: he did not want to have to do it again.

  Grace was seasick nearly all the way over. They were on the passenger list as Mrs Tessa O’Brien and maid, for although Grace was now doing well in business and was quite the leading light in Cook County’s juvenile charities, with her quiet voice, commanding air and perfect manners, she was still a British citizen and Tessa wanted no trouble with passports. There was no time to be wasted. Minnie’s last letter had left Tessa perplexed. Her letters home – as letters home so often do – usually offered only good news: how kind the family were, how the children were thriving, how Arthur’s business had taken off. But the last one had been strange, speaking of how she was missing the children, talking of Rosina (who so far as anyone knew had disappeared into Australia), and asking for money. Perhaps some earlier letter of hers had gone astray? And why could she possibly have no money – Billy had settled enough on her, God alone knew – and what could she need it for?