But it was. Alice rattled on, words bouncing round Tilly’s ears till her head ached a little. How the Spender family had moved away to live in the country ‘– for Papa’s business, you know, was so successful and he wanted a country place so that I should meet suitable people and be well turned off when the time came, and it did indeed pay him handsomely, I must say, for my Freddy is all a man should be and most charming as well as exceedingly well connected. And now, here we are, returned to the old family house, not that I was sure at first I wished to do so, but after all it is getting so fashionable around here now, is it not? Not at all as it was when we were little children and knew no better than to regard home as perfect, but I knew when I was a grown young lady that it would never do to remain here, for what chances does a girl have in such a neighbourhood? But now that I am wed, and the district is coming up with so many new properties after the Great Exhibition and so forth, why, when the old house appeared in Papa’s will as my own and not part of the marriage agreement in any way, Freddy said it would be a sin and a crime not to come and live in it for a while, though we will not of course remain here, oh no, for we have such plans for the future, wishing to live nearer to some of his connections in Belgravia, don’t you know.’
‘I am sorry to hear of your father’s death,’ Tilly said, seizing on the one fact that she could use to join in. She was feeling quite stunned by the impact of Alice’s conversation.
‘Oh, yes, poor Papa. But he had been ill for many years, you know, and it would be quite improper of me to continue to mourn too long, as though I were making a show of it, you understand, though you see I am still in half mourning.’ She patted her gown which indeed did have as its basic colour a deep purple, though its trimmings in emerald braid to match the pelisse quite overshadowed any hint of gloom that might have been in it. ‘And it depresses Freddy so to see me in black, and one must always, of course, put one’s husband first, is it not so?’
She settled even more comfortably in her chair. ‘Now, my dear, do tell me all about you. I am positively agog to hear. I understand you are married! I was told so by our neighbours on the other side – the Selbies, you know? Now, do tell me all about him! Is he wonderfully rich and handsome?’
She cast a quick look about the morning room and as though she could read her mind, Tilly knew what Alice was thinking. He could hardly be rich, since he was living with her in her father’s house – and her father’s house though pleasant and comfortable enough was far from fashionable in its appearance or appurtenances.
Alice again cast her gaze around the morning room, taking in in one raking glance its old fruitwood table and chairs, the rather faded tapestry curtains and the undoubtedly worn blue carpet together with the absence of any heavily ornamented occasional tables of the sort currently so fashionable, and said with great brightness, ‘Oh, it is such bliss to be in this dear old room again! Not a thing changed, so cosy and delightful!’ She looked back at Tilly. ‘Now, do go on. His name for a start!’
Unwillingly but unable to avoid doing so, Tilly told her about Frank. That he was indeed a most agreeable person (she gazed at her very directly as she said it) and much involved in his business which was in some way linked with her Papa’s, though she did not know much about it.
‘And nor should you!’ Alice said warmly. ‘It is none of a lady’s affair, after all! But it is a pity if a man is so set in his business that he has scant time for his wife.’
‘Oh, well, as to that,’ Tilly said, holding her direct gaze. ‘I am happy to accommodate myself to his needs. It is right and proper that I should, after all, for his welfare is my welfare.’ So there, Miss Alice. Now tell me your husband is so rich he needs no business! she thought triumphantly.
Alice proceeded to do just that, extolling her Freddy’s concern for her, his unwillingness ever to be absent from her side and her insistence that he went to his club and concerned himself with his own interests. ‘It is healthier for a man to be kept away from his pleasures for some of the time, if only to sharpen his appetite when he returns.’ At which the dimples became positively eloquent as the roguish knowing smiles chased each other around Alice’s face.
By listening carefully to all this chatter – and it continued in the same vein quite unabated – Tilly was able to pick out some facts, and it seemed to her that the much praised Freddy had no occupation in particular, being in search of some sort of activity – ‘In the City,’ according to his adoring wife – and that the couple lived comfortably and indeed in some affluence on Alice’s inheritance. Tilly now remembered her father as a rather noisy man with a long lugubrious face who owned a goodly number of acres of land in the fields between Knights-bridge and Kensington. Tilly had heard him talk to her father on occasions about the plans he had for building on the land, and clearly he had done just that, and left his only daughter well provided for; but not so well provided that she and Freddy could make their hoped-for leap to the elegancies of Belgravia life before he had his berth in the City.
The more Tilly listened the more she remembered and the more she relaxed. Alice had been often tiresome, sometimes spiteful, and always silly, but she had been useful. When she was around Dorcas had less opportunity to be unkind and for that alone Tilly regarded her with affection. There was no doubt in Tilly’s mind, however, that keeping household secrets from such a neighbour would be difficult, but why, after all, should she wish to? There was no shame in being kept on short commons, she told herself stoutly as Alice chattered happily on, and maybe it will make Alice feel superior and so even more warmly disposed towards me. It could be agreeable to have a friend of my own age about me, she told herself, watching the lively face and fluttering hands before her. The Selbie sisters, while pleasant, were all well over the age of fifty, being the four surviving daughters of the apothecary and his wife who had lived there for many years, and the other neighbours in Brompton Grove were all much of the same age. Tilly pictured a few more calls from Alice and further tides of her chatter and did not feel as put out by the prospect as she once might have been. A friend. Yes, a friend. That could brighten her life considerably.
The talk went on and, despite herself, Tilly listened and was amused. Alice loved balls and theatres and routs and parties of all kinds, and clearly had a great gift for getting herself invited to some rather spirited ones. Perhaps her Freddy’s ducal connections helped (though Tilly rather suspected from the way Alice slid over the subject, for once not going into any details, that the connections were tenuous in the extreme) or perhaps it was Alice herself who was the attraction. She was overdressed and over-exuberant, and might even be a touch fast – for Tilly suspected a hint of rouge on her cheeks as well as that extremely golden hair – but for all that she was vital and exciting and set off sparks like a firework, which had the effect of making Tilly feel quite elevated herself. She could well imagine hostesses wanting Alice Compton at their parties as a form of entertainment for the other guests. And if her Freddy was half as amusing, the couple would indeed be entitled to their social popularity.
In the event, Freddy turned out to be quite a different creature. Almost three quarters of an hour after Alice had arrived (and that was an unconscionable time to extend a morning call, which should not have been made until after luncheon anyway, if one was to observe all the rules of polite society) the doorbell rang again. By now Tilly was ready to consider ways to persuade Alice the time had come to leave and, becoming ever more aware of the need to provide Eliza with the necessary authority to set about beginning to cook the dinner for tonight, lifted her head sharply.
She heard Eliza’s shoes go clacking across the tiled hall and then a faint burst of voices, and she waited in some tension. Alice appeared to be quite unaware of any pending arrival, and was now talking with great excitement and in some considerable detail about the latest thing in the fashion ware-houses of Oxford Street, and when the door opened and Eliza appeared in the doorway, seemed surprised when Tilly stood up to see what was re
quired of her.
‘Please, Missus – er – Mum – if you please, here’s the lady’s gentleman,’ and almost pushed a man into the room and with an expressive look at Tilly, went away and closed the door behind her.
‘Ooh!’ squealed Alice. ‘You wretched man, checking up on me so! Come and be kissed at once.’ And she ran across the room and threw herself into his arms in a pretty flurry of skirts and curls.
He was, Tilly saw, when he had gently removed himself from his wife’s arms, and had her instead hanging fondly on one elbow, a tall, indeed gangling, man of some thirty years. He had hair as fair as his wife’s, but without its gleam, and eyelashes and brows that were equally pale, which gave his rather prominent pale blue eyes a startled look. He made Tilly think of a newborn kitten as he stood and blinked at her over the knob of the cane he was carrying and which he had pushed into his mouth.
‘This is my darling Freddy, Tilly, as I am sure you have guessed,’ Alice trilled excitedly. ‘Now, do admit, is he not the most charming man you ever set eyes on? After your own husband, of course! I will permit my women friends that much partiality, but no more. Quite divine, is he not?’ And she surveyed him with proud adoration for all the world, Tilly thought, as though he were a pet dog newly bedecked in ribbons. First a kitten, now a dog. I must be careful or I shall start to giggle as much as Alice and make a complete cake of myself.’
‘How do you do, Mr Compton,’ she said gravely and held out her hand.
He stared at it for a moment, a touch nonplussed, for Alice was still clinging to his elbow, but he managed at last to pull himself free and held out his hand for Tilly’s. It was a cold and rather limp hand, and Tilly looked at him a little more closely. This was not the person she had expected from Alice’s detailed description of him; that had been a positive Adonis of a man, tall and fair and handsome, whereas this one was lean and drooping. Alice’s word picture of her husband led one to expect a great wit and raconteur. This one seemed at a loss for words.
‘How de do,’ he said. ‘Glad to make your acquaintance indeed, Ma’am. M’wife has spoken of you with great warmth. Yes indeed, great warmth. I am glad to know her dear friend.’
Tilly blinked at this description of herself, but did no more than smile. There seemed little else she could do. She indicated chairs and resettled herself in her own, very aware of the clock on the mantelpiece over her head. It really was getting very close to the luncheon hour. Were they hoping to be invited to stay? Was that why they had come here before the usual hour for the paying of morning calls? She had intended to eat some toast and jam in the kitchen with Eliza, and had ordered nothing at all for the dining table. It would be embarrassing in the extreme if they were expecting an invitation for food that was not forthcoming.
‘Well,’ she said brightly, aware of her other duties as hostess, even if she had no intention of fulfilling the luncheon possibility. ‘It is agreeable to meet you, Mr Compton.’
‘Oh, do call him Freddy,’ Alice cried. ‘It is so horridly formal and unfriendly to address him so, when we are to be friends together and not merely neighbours. Are we not, Tilly?’
Tilly managed a smile. ‘Oh, indeed, yes.’
‘I shall look forward to that,’ Freddy said and smiled and suddenly looked quite different. He seemed far less the lank weed and much more a man, Tilly thought with surprise. His voice was deep and pleasant, but she had noticed that when he had first spoken and paid small attention to it. Tilly blinked and tried to work out what had changed, and then thought – he’s genuinely friendly. A genuinely nice man; how very agreeable. And smiled back.
‘I shall too,’ she said and he bent his head a little solemnly but still with that pleasant smile that had so warmed Tilly, and said nothing.
He didn’t have to. Alice chattered again, guessing why he should be home at so early an hour and then surmising that there was no further business he could prosecute in town. Perhaps he had remembered that this afternoon workers would be coming for their instructions about the house (‘For it dreadfully needs refurbishing, Tilly. You can’t imagine!’ Alice cried blithely, very obviously not looking at the shabbiness of the room in which they sat) and had come home to help his wife deal with them.
‘You are exactly right, Alice,’ Freddy said, interrupting with the ease of long practice, ‘I recall what happened when I last allowed you to instruct workmen yourself; the result was mayhem. They believed, I think, that they had died and gone to heaven, for they demanded such rates for their work that only an Indian Nabob could have paid them, or would have, for they were ridiculous, yet my dear Alice agreed it. And then they did such scapegrace work it is amazing it did not fall on their heads. I felt I was much needed here this afternoon.’
Alice dimpled, grimaced and pouted all at the same time. ‘Oh, you wretch! You make me sound quite useless. And I am not, surely?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘you are not. Just my Alice, quite, ridiculous, but Alice all the same.’
He adores her! Tilly thought in amazement and then was ashamed of herself. Why should he not love his wife? She might seem a little noisy and fussed to me but who am I to know? Dull ordinary me who does nothing and goes nowhere? Clearly this is the sort of woman that men do love, for it is there in every movement he makes that he admires her, silly as she is. Perhaps if I were a little less dull and more like Alice, Frank would look so at me – but that was a thought not to be borne and so she pushed it away.
‘Tell him it was not my fault the workmen tried to cheat me, Tilly. Tell him it is the way of all men and workmen in particular.’
‘It cannot speak of all men, of course, nor even of all workmen,’ Tilly said. ‘But I do know that there are some who are, as you say, quite unscrupulous and ever ready to cheat a trusting person.’
‘And Alice is very trusting,’ Freddy said. ‘So it is better, I think, that I deal with them this afternoon. And now –’ He glanced at the clock so swiftly that it was as though he hadn’t, but Tilly knew he had noticed the time and had the same thought as her ‘– Alice, my dear, we really must leave Mrs Quentin – I beg your pardon! (for Alice had started to protest shrilly at his formality) Tilly – to be about her day. We must see to our workmen, must we not?’
‘Oh, but Freddy!’ Alice began ingenuously. ‘I thought perhaps we would stay for –’
‘I think not, my dear.’ Freddy was inexorable and with just one hand set beneath her elbow, lifted his wife to her feet. ‘Now, here is your hat. No, no need to put it on. We are but to go home next door! Good afternoon, Mrs – ah – Tilly. I am sure I will become accustomed in time to this informality. I have had to learn many new ways since Alice entered my life.’ He seemed again to be the rather drooping young man he had first appeared, but Tilly knew better now, and took his proffered hand with real warmth.
‘I am sure we shall become good friends as well as good neighbours, Freddy,’ she said. ‘I too am happy to see you. And,’ she turned to Alice, ‘it is delightful to see you again, Alice. Forgive me for not remembering our childish days but you have grown up to be so much more interesting a person than you ever were as a child.’
‘Oh, such stuff!’ cried Alice, clearly delighted. ‘And you have not changed a bit, my dear!’ And she bestowed loud smacking kisses on each of Tilly’s cheeks, seeming oblivious to the implied insult in her words, but Tilly was sure she genuinely meant no harm and took no umbrage.
She bade them farewell on the doorstep, and watched them go down to the road and then up the adjoining flight of steps to their own front door before one final wave. Then she returned to her own kitchen where Eliza awaited her impatiently, clearly wanting to be about the afternoon’s cookery she had been promised.
Perhaps, Tilly thought as she pushed open the green baize door and went down to the warm kitchen below, perhaps things are not so bad after all. I am sure Frank will come home in a better mood, once he has got over his sore head from last night, and we shall make friends again. Perhaps if he meets our new neig
hbour and sees how kind he is to his wife, who is rather silly, he will find it in him to be kinder to me. I may not be perfect, but am not, I think, silly. Or at least I hope I’m not.
After which she had nothing more to think about than beef and fancily cut vegetables, which was a comfort. It was hard to concern herself with problems when struggling to make a dish fit for Austen Kingsley’s table with an assistant who knew even less of cookery than she did herself. So she did not think of them at all.
Chapter Ten
THE PREPARATION OF the meal went amazingly well. Eliza came panting back from Mr Spurgeon bearing a massive piece of meat weighing, as she put it, ‘the same as a baby, Mum – good thing I got used to carryin’ my little sisters around!’ She slapped it down on the kitchen table in its wrapping of bloodied Morning Post pages, after which they stood and stared at it with some doubt.
It was a very bloody object indeed, and though it had been cut up, each piece remained partially attached to its neighbour so that the original shape of the cow’s limb could be clearly seen. Tilly felt herself pale; although she had eaten meat all her life she had never had occasion to see it looking quite so much a part of the animal from which it came, and she shuddered slightly.
Eliza, however, had no qualms. ‘First off, we got to get the meat into a pot and boil it up, shall we, Mum?’
Her enthusiasm was a spur to Tilly. She poked the fire to a good glow as Eliza fetched the big cast iron pot from the scullery, put in the meat and then topped it up with water from the huge enamelled jug of freshly pumped water. Then, with her muscles bulging over the rolled-up sleeves of her pink print dress, she hauled the pot to the fire and set it on the trivet over the coals.
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