Habits of the House

by Fay Weldon

  7.35 a.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899

  So it was his Lordship himself who eventually unlocked and opened the double doors of No. 17 to an ill-tempered Mr Baum; the bell had by now stopped ringing and Baum sat bad-tempered and cold-bottomed on the step. His Lordship found the doors surprisingly heavy and realized, startling himself, that he had never before actually answered his own front door. He wondered if paying others to do so made him less or more of a man. Less, in his own eyes, he supposed; more, in the eyes of the world. Less, because fate had landed him in this situation; it was not merit but circumstance of birth had led him to this pass; more because the world presumed his energy was so important it had to be reserved for more important things than opening doors. Worse, Reginald would make light work of the task, being a well set up young man, but even the maids seemed to have no trouble. He was growing old. It was alarming how the awareness struck him with increasing frequency. Mind you, bloody Gladstone had lived until ninety, working mischief and scribbling to the end. But on the other hand, Robert’s fellow Tories felt confident that if the Liberals finally brought in a Pensions Bill for the impoverished and very old – those over the age of seventy – few would live to collect it.

  He the Earl was not immortal. His son Arthur must get going, get married, provide an heir to the estate. Otherwise, on his death his own younger brother would collect the title – and the estate debts, of course, which were plentiful. These days vast estates meant vast debts rather than vast wealth – and poor Isobel, if she lived so long, would be ousted even from the dower house, which was in a shocking state of repair as it was, which would not suit her at all. A pity Arthur had so little interest in political affairs, and Rosina so much.

  By the time the door was finally opened to Mr Baum his Lordship was so preoccupied by his own thoughts that it was moments before he recognized the fellow sitting on the steps.

  ‘Good God,’ he said, seeing Baum. ‘You! Why?’ It was scarcely a genial greeting, and Eric Baum thought he deserved better.

  Baum stood up slowly, and winced from a stiffness in his legs. He had, he explained, some urgent news from South Africa which he thought should be imparted to his Lordship before he set off for the House.

  ‘In my experience, news that is urgent is seldom of permanent interest,’ said his Lordship with a detached smile and the polite charm of the old Etonian who is actually delivering an insult, but one that only his own kind will recognize. ‘However, dear fellow, since you’re here – you’d better come in and tell me all about it.’

  Robert courteously stepped aside to allow Baum to enter. He noted that Baum was wearing a bright yellow waistcoat with a stiff high collar, in the current fashion amongst some young men, apparently aping that of those who lived in God’s Own Country. Which was how the English sardonically enjoyed referring to the Americans and their vulgar, money-grubbing, noisy, self-affirming ways. His Lordship wondered quite how it was that he had ended up with a financial counsellor so attuned to the worst of contemporary taste. Once lawyers and professional men of all kinds had been predictably old, grey and cautious. No longer.

  Baum repeated that, in his opinion, time was of the essence, and more that since his news affected the finances of the whole family, the Countess should perhaps be present at an immediate meeting, and the children too – they both being well into their majority and having so much of their wealth now invested in Natal. His eyes seemed to dart about uneasily, as a man’s might when he has something to hide.

  His Lordship was mildly disturbed by his lawyer’s presumption, but since he was currently in debt to the fellow to the tune of some thirty thousand pounds, merely pointed out that her Ladyship normally breakfasted in bed and since neither of the children was a trustee of their trust funds, and he was, there was no necessity at all for their presence. And surely it was seemly that business matters waited until later in the day?

  ‘Stay to breakfast, my good man, stay to breakfast,’ he said genially, and at least did not suggest, though the temptation arose, that Baum might prefer to go round to the trade entrance and have breakfast in the servants’ hall, where no doubt at this time of the morning it was available. He remembered in time that it was the Prince’s friend and financial advisor Ernest Cassel – recently made a Knight of the Grand Cross – who had recommended Mr Baum to Robert as a shrewd and reliable financial counsellor and solicitor, with a background in mining and a good grasp of current commercial and financial matters. A good choice to manage the Dilberne financial estate, which in his Lordship’s own description was in ‘rather a jolly mess’.

  But then Cassel knew well enough how to conduct himself as a gentleman, whereas Baum had just evidenced that he did not. Gentlemen wore their hats when out and about, were smartly attired, did not wear ridiculous fashions, or run through the streets in a panic to disturb other people’s slumber, and then sit gloomily upon their damp front steps.

  Cassel was urbane and self-deprecating. ‘When I was young,’ he’d said to his Lordship, ‘people called me a gambler. As soon as the scale of my operations increased they called me a speculator. Now I am called a banker. But I have been doing the same thing all the time. You need someone reliable with an eye for detail, like young Eric Baum.’

  But now Baum’s preoccupation with detail was running out of control. He seemed unable to stop babbling: her Ladyship had a good head on her shoulders and needed to be involved; the children needed to stop running up debts, Master Arthur’s tailor’s bills were now a matter of real concern with Mr Skinner from Savile Row contemplating legal action, and Miss Rosina had written a cheque to the Women’s Suffrage Movement, which Mr Baum was sorely tempted to deny. Suffrage would do women no good, they would all simply end up as work drudges, and men feeling no responsibility at all for their welfare, but to what degree was Mr Baum to use his own discretion in such matters? The bills came in to him and if he did nothing, nothing was resolved.

  ‘And these are the least of my worries,’ said Mr Baum, ‘I regret to say. What I have to tell you concerns all the immediate members of your family. All being signatories, all must hear it in person, in case of any future dispute. It is of great significance to all of them.’ Robert frowned; he was no more used to being told what to do than he was to opening his own front door. ‘Your Lordship …’ he heard Baum’s voice as though from far off.

  He sighed. The debtor, it seemed, must not only be servant to the lender, but give the lender his attention. There was to be no escape. He rang for Mrs Neville, who summoned Grace, who roused Lady Isobel and the children with the advice that they were expected down to breakfast with his Lordship and Mr Baum at nine o’clock. In the kitchens Smithers complained and abandoned the staff breakfast. Elsie, who had at least managed to have the morning room fire burning brightly, ran to bring Cook down from her attic to help achieve a formal upstairs breakfast for five including a guest, one hour earlier than normal. In the meanwhile his Lordship left Baum to cool his heels in the library and went out to the mews to check that Agripin was getting the treatment he deserved.

  The horse was a promising four-year-old bay Robert had recently won in a wager with the Prince of Wales. The Prince could well afford the loss, having backed Cassel’s Gadfly for a win in her maiden race, to the tune of five hundred pounds at seventeen to one. That win had been at the October meet in Newmarket. There had been eighteen in the field. The Prince liked to win at racing just as he liked to win at cards. It cheered him up. Agripin would need to be farmed out to Roseberry’s estate in Epsom for John Huggins to train, an expense Robert had not reckoned on at the time of the wager, but it was surely a good investment. You only had to look at the creature to tell he would eventually make someone a fortune, and at this particular time it would be just as well that he was that person, and that it should happen rather quickly.

  The only reason he had transferred most of his, and Isobel’s, wealth – and indeed what was left of the children’s nest eggs – into the gold mine in Natal was th
at the seam was nearer the surface and a great deal quicker and easier to bring the ore to the surface than the diamonds in which so many of his landed friends and colleagues had invested. He hoped, rather against hope, that the news Baum brought was not to do with yet more trouble from the wretched Dutch Boers. The Modder Kloof mine was a few score miles to the south of Ladysmith, but so great was the British military superiority in arms and numbers the place had seemed safe enough. More, the Boer treatment of the natives was so appalling that loyalty from workers could surely be expected in the many British enterprises springing up in the area, providing employment, wealth and culture to a benighted land. Mind you, he supposed, that was probably the same assumption made by the Romans until they found the Iceni under Boadicea sacking Colchester and Londinium in 60 AD. What, after so much we have done for them – roads, rule of law, wealth, trading opportunities – still yet they can hate us?

  An Early Breakfast

  8.15 a.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899

  Grace, in her attempts to bring the family down to breakfast an hour too soon, approached Arthur first. He stretched a long lithe arm from the bed and tried to grab her ankle – but that she knew was merely from habit. When he had been fourteen and she, at eighteen an agreeable, pretty and willing young thing, his enthusiasm had been greater. Now she could pull away easily enough; he remained, she thought, essentially a child, while she had used the last dozen years to grow in dignity and pride. Then she would have engaged in an unseemly tussle, giggling the while, but the passage of the years somehow dried up the capacity to giggle. The more one knew of the world, the less frivolous existence seemed. She could only assume Arthur still knew very little of the world. Men took longer to grow up than girls, and the upper classes were slower than the lower. He could afford to stay an innocent.

  All she had to say was, ‘Stop that, Master Arthur,’ and he did. She thought there was probably some hope for him yet. By the time he took over the title he might become as good a man as his father.

  ‘Breakfast, with Pater? Why? Is there another tailor’s bill in the post?’ he asked her now.

  ‘Worse than that. That solicitor is here,’ she said. ‘Mr Baum.’

  Arthur groaned and got out of bed. He was naked and beautiful, his skin a kind of golden brown wherever hair grew. Grace shielded her eyes from his parts. She knew them well from of old, of course – and she couldn’t help noticing now that they had grown even more impressive as he grew to full maturity – all the same she felt he might do her the courtesy of some small gesture to protect his privacy. The one thing which might lead her to take the jump, leave the safety of service and join the work force – she had savings which would enable her to take a course as a lady typewriter, and there were good hostels where working girls could live respectably and cheaply – was the sheer indignity of being treated as no different from a pet cat or dog, as another species altogether, so that their betters could perform their own animal functions – have sex, excrete, urinate, give birth, get drunk, vomit, quite freely in their presence. If the servants were young and pretty sexual favours could be expected from them, and no extra pay given, as if their bodies as well as their souls were owned. And though her experiences with young Arthur still loomed large in her mind, she suspected that he had hardly given the matter any thought at all in the last ten years.

  ‘But why at this hour?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Grace. ‘I saw him from the window. He looked like a bird of bad omen. He had a yellow vest, like Miss Rosina’s parrot.’

  Miss Rosina kept a yellow-vested Senegalese parrot in her rooms, to the great annoyance of the servants. This bird was allowed to fly free from its cage, and scattered the floors with bits of fruit and vegetable matter and shat at will. The servants then had to do the cleaning up. Rosina had trained the bird to squawk ‘Votes for Women’ at any man who approached. Grace thought it was quite funny but down in the servants’ hall Mr Neville took it amiss.

  ‘All this fuss,’ he said. ‘Women! They’ll only vote the same as their fathers and husbands, so what’s the point? Waste of bloody time.’

  Grace Wakes Rosina

  8.25 a.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899

  Grace went next to wake Rosina. She was a light and nervous sleeper, and never quite seemed to stop thinking, even when her eyes were closed. Her sleeping eyelids trembled. You could almost see the thoughts crossing to and fro just beneath them. Grace tapped on the little, white, long-fingered hand with her rather large and work-worn one. Rosina sat upright in bed, instantly. Like her brother she slept naked, but from principle rather than general carelessness. She was a member of the Rational Dress Association. She had little white breasts and pink nipples, which she made no attempt to cover up on Grace’s account. She liked to sleep with the windows open at night, which was all very well in the countryside, but, as everyone knew, the night air of the city was poisonous.

  It was a great waste for such a graceful body to be unmarried, Grace always thought, but it was not her place to be Rosina’s friend. When Rosina turned eighteen she had declined the opportunity to have her own lady’s maid, saying she was perfectly able to wash, brush and dress herself, thank you. All the same, she was not above borrowing Grace from her mother from time to time and requiring Grace to mend, wash, iron and even accompany her to rowdy public meetings, should she prefer not to go to them alone. Thus she added to Grace’s workload but not her income, matters the gentry seldom thought about while pursuing their lofty principles.

  Now Rosina got out of bed and looked around for her wrap. She was all long, pale, smooth limbs and slender body, centred by a copious reddish blonde bush of curly hair between her legs. She was as tall as her father, who was well over six foot, and shorter than her brother by an inch. Her jaw was too strong and her brow too prominent for real beauty. Her tongue was harsh – she spoke her mind and spoke the truth, careless of the feelings of others. She had refused to do the Season as girls of her class were required to do.

  ‘I am not a prize cow at a market,’ she had said at the time, ‘to be stared at and valued. I am not a slave girl at an auction to be bought for my body after due inspection. That is all the Season really is, that and an opportunity for the mothers to show off their jewels. I will not be part of it!’

  Lady Isobel had remonstrated and then given it up. She had once remarked to Grace that God had blessed her with a handsome, cheerful and obliging son, then tried her with an unbiddable daughter. She must be thankful for what she had. Perhaps one day some brave man would come along and take Rosina off her hands and tame her.

  Grace thought there was something not quite right with the connections in Lady Rosina’s brain. Most girls could bend their will to the demands of society, whether they were the gentry or in service. She herself found it difficult. She recognized the problem in herself – she was too clever for her own good, too ready to take offence for her own comfort. Why did she object to the way Lady Rosina now let her wrap slip to the floor? Why did she find the girl’s lack of self-consciousnesses offensive, get so upset if others felt free to behave as they wanted to, not as custom suggested? Yet she did. She had, she supposed, been marked by her own strict upbringing. Some reactions had been engraved into her being, and no matter how her mind argued with them, they had become part of her. She wondered if anyone would ever find a way to unpick these habits of thought and supposed not.

  She picked up the wrap and handed it to Rosina, and felt a surge of relief as, in the interests of warmth rather than decency, she covered herself up. But Grace worried that she would never manage to find herself a husband. The girl did not have the right instincts. Arthur had no shortage of girls who saw him as an ideal partner, though none so far had seemed to particularly interest him. Rosina went to public meetings and took notes, but scuttled in and out, and didn’t stop to make acquaintances, as other girls would. For all her brave front she was nervous in crowds, and did not speak in public. She tried once and complained her voice
rose an octave so she squeaked and the men around her shuffled and laughed in embarrassment and impatience until she stopped. So she did not try it again.

  ‘I don’t want breakfast,’ she said now to Grace. ‘I’m not hungry. I’d be content with a glass of water and some of Pappagallo’s nuts. What’s going on?’ Pappagallo was her parrot, who lived on a diet of sunflower seeds and pine nuts, hardly food for humans. Though Rosina was capable of arguing otherwise. She was a member of the Theosophical Society.

  ‘Mine not to reason why,’ said Grace, as she went through Rosina’s wardrobe and laid out suitable morning apparel, choosing the least eccentric articles of clothing she could find. ‘But Mr Baum is here. You are required to be there.’

  ‘I don’t see why I should,’ said Rosina. ‘Horrid little man.’

  Rosina was also a member of the Costume Society, the Aesthetic Society, and the Rational Dress Association, so few of her clothes were conventional or did anything for her figure. She liked to go corset-less but hated sessions with the dressmaker, so was reduced to visiting stores and buying ready-made clothes, which tended to hang in folds around her bust, and grip her around her waist. Some of the new Liberty Style fashions fitted her, but tended to be draped in a flowing Grecian way or were quaintly old-fashioned and simply not suitable for breakfast. Grace in the end picked out a pair of brown velvet pantaloons and a frilly-collared floral silk shirt, and laid them out.

  ‘Pantaloons! Very daring for you, Grace,’ said Rosina, but she put them on.

  ‘Ours but to do and die,’ Grace murmured.

  ‘Oh, Tennyson,’ said Rosina. ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade. You are very knowledgeable, Grace, in spite of being so backward in many ways. I suspect you know more poetry than I do, had a better education at your Ragged School than I ever did at Miss Broughton’s Academy for Young Ladies. Father sent Arthur to Eton, but I was only a girl so Miss Broughton’s and a spell at a finishing school was good enough for me.’