London Lodgings

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Lucy’s the kitchen maid, Mum, and has no dealin’s with such matters,’ Eliza said firmly. ‘Afternoon off or no afternoon off, I’ll be here to sort out the washerwoman and don’t you doubt it. Now you rest here and I’ll fetch your luncheon up in no time. Such a carry on. And her not telling me!’ And she went away, clearly less entranced with Dorcas than she had been hitherto.

  Dorcas herself came into the drawing-room shortly after luncheon. ‘I trust you’re quite better now? Good. I dare say it was simply that time of the month for you, yes? I know I am sometimes a martyr to the pain. Now my dear, rest yourself and I shall see you at dinner time. I have some shopping to do in Knightsbridge.’

  ‘There cannot be much left for you to buy,’ Tilly said with a flash of malice. ‘I cannot imagine how you can spend so much time in warehouses and emporia.’

  Dorcas laughed. ‘Oh, for me shopping is the best sport there is – I have my eye on a darling new bonnet, and also another gown. There are times coming I suspect when I will have more occasions on which to wear such things. I have been in need of a partner for balls and cotillions, but now, now – well, we shall see. Is there anything I can fetch for you, dear? Some silks that need matching perhaps?’

  Tilly ignored the bite in the offer; perhaps she did not have such money to spend on clothes but that did not mean she was so dull her only interests were in sewing with well-matched silks.

  ‘Not at present,’ she said, and then had a sudden thought. ‘You could call in at the jewellers again, of course, and see if he has managed to obtain news of my spoons.’

  ‘Oh, as to that,’ Dorcas said, buttoning her gloves with a flourish, ‘I doubt it. He said he would ask about the trade, did he not, but he held out small hope of any success. As he told you, dear Tilly, once sold, items do not stay still waiting to be bought again. Perhaps you can buy yourself some new spoons – they cannot be as rare as you say.’

  ‘Those were,’ Tilly said sharply. ‘My Mamma – well, let be. Ask, all the same, if you please.’

  ‘Oh. I shall,’ Dorcas said and, waving one hand and with her broad silk skirts swishing cheerfully, left Tilly quite certain that she would make no shift at all to go to the jewellers. Once Dorcas had her eyes set on an afternoon amongst the milliners and modistes, she was not to be deflected.

  The afternoon settled into dullness, after Eliza took away her tray and she stretched herself on her sofa again. Tilly thought sleepily that it might be agreeable to pretend to be an invalid for a little while, even though she knew perfectly well that she was nothing of the sort. Then she was puzzled to hear the knocker far below. And sighed. One of her neighbours making calls, perhaps. A tedium but she had to tolerate it. She sat up and set her gown to rights, glad she had put on one of her prettier ones that morning, in light blue wool cloth, carefully cut and with a nicely trimmed bodice that showed off her lace collar and cuffs.

  The door opened and she straightened her shoulders, ready to greet whoever Eliza showed in with a neighbourly smile, but when she turned her head the smile froze on her face.

  ‘Mr Leland! I am surprised to see you again. And you have wasted your visit, for Dor – Mrs Oliver has gone to Knights-bridge shopping, and may well take herself further afield. I am sorry you have been discommoded.’

  ‘I didn’t come to see Mrs Oliver, Mrs Quentin. I waited and watched till she had gone and made sure she would not return too soon before I ventured to knock at your door.’ He stood and smiled at her and she looked at him more closely. He seemed very pleased with himself, and she frowned at that.

  ‘If you have come because you think I am ill, then let me disabuse you of any such notion,’ she said. ‘I am perfectly fit. A moment of giddiness is not something over which to exercise yourself greatly.’

  ‘I am glad of it,’ he said. ‘I was alarmed at the time but I now see that you are perfectly comfortable and will concern myself no more on that point.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘So I bid you good afternoon, Mr Leland. I shall tell Mrs Oliver you called to see her, of course.’

  ‘I told you!’ he said. ‘I watched and waited till she had gone. It is you I wish to speak to. I did not come to enquire after your health.’

  ‘Oh? Then why did you come?’ She was being very acid with him and she knew it and was puzzled. The man had done her no harm, after all. Why snap at him so? Because she enjoyed doing it, she decided. Anyway, being sharp with him would soon send him packing and she wished to be left in peace.

  ‘I came to disabuse you of a notion and to tell you that Mrs Oliver is not a person over whom you need exercise yourself greatly.’ He sounded grave, but there was a note of laughter to match his mocking repetition of her words.

  ‘I cannot imagine what you mean,’ she snapped.

  ‘Oh dear. This is difficult! But I dare say it is meant to be so. Otherwise, how could we value what we win?’

  ‘You speak in riddles, Sir, and I have no time for such matters. I have my duties to see to, a washerwoman to interview and my linen cupboard to sort and orders to be got up for the butcher and the grocer – I am surprised that you too do not have duties about your shop to keep you occupied at this time of day.’

  ‘I decided to leave my shop to the care of my shop-boy this afternoon.’ There was still laughter in his voice. ‘On a matter of importance of the sort I must discuss with you, we trades-people must make what shift we can to cover all our duties.’ He smiled widely again. ‘Is all this sounding foolish?’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ she said tartly.

  ‘Then I must, as they say, address our muttons. I come to tell you, dear Mrs Quentin, that I have no interest whatsoever in your tenant. Mrs Oliver has been for me a means to an end. She has made herself quite ridiculous in my eyes, throwing her hat at me, but I have pretended to field it for my own purposes.’

  She opened her mouth to speak but he shook his head. ‘Hear me out. I agreed to her transparent invitation to help her with her curtains – and I must tell you she is a villainous needlewoman. The stitches in those curtains are no credit to her – I agreed, as I say, in order to see you as often as I might. For me the important part of my visits to this house has always been seeing you in the drawing-room for a few moments before the interminable business of fending off Mrs Oliver’s flirtatiousness in her sitting room. Ever since I saw you in the kitchen last Christmas, my mind and feelings have been bent to one end, absurd though I feared my pretensions might be, and silent though I have been in my few – far too few – conversations with you. Now the curtains are finished, for which I must say I will be eternally grateful, the time has come for me to be honest and to tell you that it is you in whom I have an abiding interest. Dear Mrs Quentin, I have come to ask your permission to pay you my addresses. Had you a father or brother to whom I could address myself, of course I would, but in the absence of such persons I must address you directly. I hope you will not spurn my interest, Mrs Quentin, and will permit me to call upon you often. I can assure you that my intentions are of great seriousness, and though my present situation is not precisely affluent, the time will come, I do assure you, when I will be a person of some substance and will be able to –’

  ‘Mr Leland, stop this at once!’ Tilly had found her voice at last. ‘Are you quite mad?’

  ‘Of course I am, dear Mrs Quentin,’ he said. ‘I am mad with love for you.’

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  IT WAS DIFFICULT to be sure, Tilly had to admit to herself, why she had agreed to accept Jem Leland’s attentions. She liked him well enough; he had a serenity and security about him that was very comforting and he was easy company, but was that the only reason? Could there be an element of malice in her, she would ask her pillow in the darker watches of the night when her sleep was disturbed by such ponderings, that made it agreeable for her to score over Dorcas? The fact that Jem himself was well aware of this possibility did not help. He was amused by Dorcas’s interest in him but far from flattered by it.

  ‘
I do not,’ he assured Tilly, ‘regard myself as so well set up a man that ladies find me irresistible. I have much too clear a vision of my own shortcomings to permit myself any such fantastic notions. I am sure Mrs Oliver’s interest in me was from the start based on boredom. She is a person who likes to adorn herself, and enjoys displaying her latest attire. I now know the reason she set her cap at me that morning at the shop was that she had a new toilette – and you knew me, and I clearly was pleased to see you. She likes to exercise power over others, you see. To distract me from you merely amused her. Not that it was not easy for her to, shall we say, make you step back. I have seen her with you, my dear, and it saddens me to see how easily she is able to get her own way.’

  Tilly defended herself vigorously at that accusation. ‘I am as aware as you of the way Dorcas likes to – well, twist people to her own designs. But she does not twist me. That morning, to be truthful, I was not concerned about the way she flirted with you. It did not matter unduly, I regret to tell you, and I hope you don’t mind my doing so! For the rest, I allow her to do the things she wants only if they are of benefit to me or mine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said gently and she felt herself redden a little.

  ‘As sure as it is possible to be,’ she said and he nodded.

  ‘You see what I mean? She is a most beguiling and clever person.’

  Tilly was much struck. ‘Beguiling? That is the word I used to describe her.’

  ‘So we are in agreement, are we not? How very pleasant!’ And he beamed at her and proffered his cup for more tea.

  Their lives had fallen into a pleasant pattern. She spent her mornings busying herself about the house, ensuring that the kitchen ran smoothly, ordering her meals, dealing with the buying of necessary goods and paying the bills precisely when they were due; mending her linen as well as caring for her ornaments and flowers, as did any lady of a household; and her afternoons she spent with her small son. Once the weather eased into a warm spring he stopped having his nap and he and Sophie played in the garden most afternoons under Tilly’s eye. After the children’s supper and bedtime there was dinner at which Dorcas would sit and chatter away, pretending she did not know that Jem Leland would appear soon afterwards, and then would disappear about her own interests.

  She had taken to visiting the theatre a great deal with an old friend from her Fulham days, a Mrs Dangerfield, or so she told Tilly. (‘She has no time to come so far to visit me here,’ she said offhandedly. ‘So I go to her house and then we go into town.’) That left the field clear for Jem to arrive.

  Which he did at about half past eight, with the shop safely shut and his day’s work done, including his counting house duties. He would settle himself in the other armchair by Tilly’s fireside, for spring or not she still felt the need for an evening fire, and tell her of his day’s work, as she told him of hers. Quite like old married people, she would think sometimes and then refuse to dwell any more along those lines. They were friends, that was all. It was very agreeable to have a friend, one with whom she could talk in a desultory fashion when she wanted, or be silent if she chose. For so many years she had only had Eliza as a confidante, and though she was a loyal and trustworthy servant, she could not be the truly close friend Jem was becoming; and she cherished him for that. But, she assured herself stoutly, no more.

  Both had expected trouble from Dorcas. ‘She will become very angry when she realizes that you are not interested in her,’ Tilly had told him when he first made his declaration. ‘I really do not think I can face the fuss and noise that will result.’

  He was very firm about that. ‘You cannot permit such a person to dictate how your life will be run. I offer you my undying affection, and ask only that you permit me to visit you often in the hope that in time you will come to reciprocate my feelings. You cannot, you really cannot, refuse me that on the grounds of the possible ill opinion and bad behaviour of Mrs Oliver!’ He sounded positively scandalized. ‘That would be the outside of enough!’

  After a great deal of thought, she had agreed that he might visit her often and pay his respects, while making no promises about the outcome of his devotion.

  ‘I must tell you, Mr Leland – very well then – Jem,’ as he had protested, ‘that I do not know what my feelings for you might be. I regard you as clearly a man of worth and all that is good. But I have not thought of myself except as a widow, you see, these many years. I don’t know, I truly don’t, what I wish to – I can make no promises.’

  ‘I ask none,’ he said. ‘Only the right to visit you and to be sure that you know of my unswerving devotion. That’s all.’

  ‘As long as you don’t speak of it too often,’ she said, alarmed. ‘I don’t think I could be comfortable if you did that.’

  He laughed. ‘I know what you mean, my dear Tilly. You will, I hope, permit me that degree of familiarity? No, I’m not made of the sort of stuff that permits dying falls and eternal swearings. I love you and I have said so. I want no reply more than you can bear. We will deal very comfortably together. I’m sure if you stand up to Mrs Oliver and tell her firmly that it is the way you wish it, she will accept it. I too, of course, will speak to her and make it clear that –’

  ‘No!’ she said quickly. ‘Oh, no. I must deal with her. I know how to – it will be best. No, I will not be dissuaded,’ for he had opened his mouth to try. ‘I know how to save her face, you see. That is important to her.’

  He agreed unwillingly and then she had to decide how to do the face-saving, for she had in truth no notion how to, and decided in the end to come out with the truth baldly and leave it to Dorcas to find her own way out of any embarrassment. And the following day she did just that.

  Dorcas listened in stony silence until she had finished, and then lifted her brows superciliously. ‘You are saying this man agreed to help me make those stupid curtains simply in order to be in the same house as you and look at you for a few moments each evening?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tilly said.

  There was a long silence and then Dorcas had laughed, loudly, musically and with, to Tilly’s ear, obvious falsity. ‘And here was I trying to let the poor creature down lightly! I knew he had a tendresse somewhere. He came in the house so often I could not fail to know that. I cannot pretend I did not think for a moment it could be you he yearned for. You are, after all, such a mouse, my dear Tilly; are you not? You always were! So, I was kind to him and did what I could to let him know I had no interest in him of the sort I imagine he required. Indeed it is a great relief that I need not have worried myself. You may have him and welcome. I do assure you that a linen draper in a small way of business in a village like Brompton is not my idea of good parti!’ And she laughed even more merrily and disappeared off to her own room.

  And so it had been ever since. Spring folded itself into a warm and languorous summer and the house was busy with the noise of the children; and of a new development. The Misses K and F asked Tilly if a young protégée of theirs, a music teacher, might come and live with them. Would Mrs Quentin object, they asked, if they purchased a larger piano for their sitting room and brought her pupils to the house? They would of course pay accordingly.

  Mrs Quentin did not object and after some discussion with a builder from Knightsbridge, who had some time to spare now that the main buildings in the area had been completed and all the new houses taken, had come to make necessary changes to the Misses K and F’s apartment. Two bedrooms, by dint of careful rearrangement of room walls, became three with one being rather small but habitable none the less and a new piano arrived in their sitting room. The young protégée turned out to be a thin, curl-bedecked woman with bulging blue eyes. Tilly estimated her to be close on forty years. She was much given to giggling and throwing arch glances at her two benefactresses, who clearly adored her and fought jealously for her approval, a situation that seemed to give all three of them enthralling satisfaction.

  Soon piano pupils, children aged between ten and sixteen, were climbin
g the stairs looking glum as they prepared for their lessons. Miss Cynthia Barnetsen appeared to be a good enough music teacher and took on Sophie and Duff as well, much to Duff’s disgust. (‘Boys don’t have to play pianos,’ he cried in despair. ‘Or they shouldn’t.’ The house not only hummed with people but rang with music and the sounds of practised scales. Not unpleasant from Tilly’s point of view, though Eliza sometimes complained. However, since she now had a second maid to help her and Lucy, a rather sullen young woman called Kate, with large feet over which she tended to fall easily and a tendency to being slapdash which demanded much supervisory scolding, she was happy enough.

  As time passed, Tilly found herself becoming more and more comfortable with Jem Leland. He was capable of understanding without being told when she was tired and disinclined for speech; and equally knew when she was feeling lively and in the mood for chatter. Duff, who had been scornful of him at first, seeing him as too much in his way when he wished to have his mother to himself on a Sunday afternoon (the other time when Jem came as a matter of custom to number seventeen), learned to like him a great deal since he discovered that he knew a lot about such things as worms and caterpillars and snails and was not averse to handling them and discussing their finer points. Sophie, who had started by ignoring Jem completely, came to like him too, once he displayed an undoubted talent for inventing stories to tell them on the long summer evenings in the garden.

  Dorcas was rarely visible, keeping to her rooms most of the day and going out after dinner most evenings. There were no problems about her rent for she was, as she had told Tilly from the start, too lazy to remember when to pay her bills and had made arrangements with Mr Cobbold to see to it that each month the rent would be sent. And it was, arriving by messenger on the first Monday of each month like clockwork. So life should have been tranquil and good for Tilly.