Habits of the House

by Fay Weldon

  ‘I am surprised no one has paraded the heads of Boers on poles outside the House of Lords,’ said the Honourable Reverend Edwin, by way of a joke. ‘My bloodthirsty brother would love that.’ His audience of two laughed politely. But still he did not eat.

  Edwin regarded his elder brother Robert, Earl of Dilberne, recently risen to Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, as a man entirely without scruple. Was he not known as a gambling companion to the King, the lecher; and as a friend to Arthur ‘Bob’s your Uncle’ Balfour, nepotist, necromancer and Leader of the House? All politicians were damned and Dilberne was the worst of all politicians, a full-blooded Tory, more concerned with the welfare of his war horses than relieving the miseries of the troops. As near as dammit a Papist, who had permitted his only son to marry a Roman Catholic girl from Chicago, who would no doubt breed like a rabbit and remove Edwin still further from any hope of inheritance. A man married to a wife better fitted to be a pillar of salt out of Sodom and Gomorrah than the social butterfly she was, Isobel, Countess of Dilberne.

  ‘But—’ said Adela.

  ‘I have heard too many buts from you, girl,’ said Edwin. ‘Don’t interrupt me.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ said Adela.

  She was a pretty if underfed girl of sixteen, with large blue eyes in a pale angelic face, and when her hair was not in tight plaits, as her mother insisted upon, it rippled in thick, clumpy, blonde-red Botticelli waves to her waist. She was doing her best not to answer her father back, but it was difficult, though no doubt good practice for her future life of humility, devotion and obedience. The convent of the Little Sisters of Bethany, where her parents had entered her as a novitiate, she comforted herself, at least kept a good table. On the 21st of May, her seventeenth birthday, she would be off. She couldn’t wait.

  Adela willed her father to pick up his spoon, and his hand trembled and she thought he would, but he had another thought and put it down again. Adela took a breath of despair and hunger mixed and a button burst off her bodice. Fortunately no one noticed, and she was able to push the button under the edge of her plate. She would ask Ivy to sew it on later. It was a horrid dress anyway, dark brown and no trimmings and too tight around her chest.

  Actually Elise had noticed, but said nothing, so as not to draw Edwin’s attention to his daughter’s bosom. Time passed but brought its embarrassments with it. Ivy the maid suggested from time to time that new dresses should be bought, now that all possible seams had been let out, but new clothes were an extravagance when half the world was in rags. It was Elise’s conviction that if Adela ate less she would grow less.

  Once it had been a love match – a chance meeting on a cross-Channel steamer in a storm between an Austrian princess and the fourth son of an Earl – but both dedicated to the service of God. The flesh had won over the spirit, the Anglican over the Catholic; they had married impetuously and neither had ever quite forgiven themselves or each other. The proof of their spiritual weakness was the sixteen-year-old Adela. And now she was growing fast, for all her mother could stop it, and worse, turning into a veritable vehicle of concupiscence. It was all her husband, all that any man, could do, and he was the most saintly of men, to keep his eyes away from her changing body. The sooner the girl could be packed off to the Sisters of Bethany the better.

  ‘Better stay home and pray for the salvation of our new monarch’s soul,’ said the Rector, finding breath, ‘than be part of the vulgar display of ostentation and wealth. A double coronation! There is no need for it: she is the man’s wife, but he must have her crowned too, Queen Consort – a royal gift much like the bunch of flowers any errant husband brings home to his wife when his conscience is assaulted by his misdeeds.’ In January Bertie, Prince of Wales, had ascended to the throne on the death of his mother Queen Victoria. Her reign had lasted sixty-three years: the shock to the country was great, the more so since it now had Bertie, seen by some as a voluptuary, a drunkard and a gambler, by others as a genial if hot-headed fellow, as Edward VII. The new Queen, Alexandra, for forty-three years Princess of Wales, was seen as an angel of docile and loving disposition, though shocked some few by including her husband’s mistresses amongst her friends. ‘The whited sepulchre which is the Queen Consort’s bosom,’ Edwin declared with some passion, ‘will indubitably glitter with diamonds; but they will be stained by sin and depravity. The King has no shame – he will even flaunt his mistresses in our sacred Abbey, I am told, the whole gallery of them seated together as in any common whorehouse.’

  He cracked open his egg but then paused, and failed to remove the shell. Adela had cracked hers likewise but was now obliged to stay the spoon in her hand.

  Elise changed the subject and said she hoped Edwin would say as much from the pulpit on Sunday: if he said nothing the Coronation would serve as an excuse for idleness and drunkenness for months to come.

  Edwin replied that on Sunday he would have no pulpit, there would be no sermon. That even as he spoke the Church furnishers were at work in St Aidan’s refurbishing the interior. In future he would speak not from a mediaeval stone structure but from a plain white table with a white cloth and simple cross: there would be no more incense; there would be no candles, no more mystic Catholic mumbo jumbo. When the pulpit was gone, the furnishers would turn their attention to St Cecilia’s gallery, that wormy relic of a false religion, and be rid of it for ever. He glanced briefly at Adela as he spoke, as if in expectation of her protest, and then began to eat his egg, which by now was cold.

  ‘But Father,’ said Adela, without thinking, even forgetting that she was hungry, ‘please no! The musicians’ gallery is so very old and pretty it seems a pity to pull it down. I am sure God won’t mind if it stays. Please let it be.’

  The Hon. Rev. Edwin Hedleigh slammed the Bible so hard upon the breakfast table that the crockery jumped, and spots of lightly cooked cold egg ended up on the tablecloth, and worse, on the dark red velvety cover of the Bible itself. The Mrs Hon. Rev., dutiful and obedient as ever, leapt from her chair and dabbed ineffectually at the spots with a napkin. Her husband’s rages left her shaken and incompetent.

  ‘Old and pretty is hardly the point. I have had enough of your yes buts, Adela. Have you no respect? That confounded gallery is no more than a haunt for all the drunks, rogues and vagabonds of the parish. They shelter there overnight, the better to pursue their filthy habits.’

  ‘Couldn’t we just lock the church at night to keep them out?’ Adela asked. Her voice quavered, and she despised herself for it, but she persisted. She thought perhaps hunger made her brave. She had no idea what a filthy habit was – no one told her anything – but she had no doubt it was reprehensible. She had so hoped the church furnishers would spare the musicians’ gallery. Her father must have written especially to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, asking for a faculty for its removal, and the Bishop had given it. The older things were, Adela reflected, the more unpopular they seemed to be. The gallery, with its delicately carved traceries and oak panel, pale with age, of a dancing St Cecilia the Virgin amongst her musicians – viol, lyre and tambourine – must date back at least five hundred years.

  ‘Let the idolators win? Lock up the house of God? Deny the faithful their solace? For the sake of some wormy oak carving and the relics of a false religion? Are you stupid as well as plain, Adela?’ And the Hon. Rev. seized up the Bible and went to his study leaving his breakfast uneaten. He was even taller than his brother Robert, Earl of Dilberne, and as fiery tempered as his brother was genial.

  ‘Now see what you’ve done,’ Elise said to her daughter, more in the hope of appeasing her husband than reproaching the girl, and followed him through to the study.

  As for Adela, she ate her egg and toast before anything worse happened, finished her father’s, tackled the next two eggs – he always had three eggs and her mother two to her one – swept all available crumbs into a napkin and went out of the Rectory into the frosty morning to feed the robin, who sat waiting on his usual perch on the lowest lim
b of the oak tree. She was practising thankfulness, and managed to thank Jesus for giving her the parents he had chosen for her, though this morning it took some effort. ‘Plain’ and ‘stupid’ had made their mark.

  A Letter to the Countess from the Duchess

  Tom Fletcher the postman liked his new round very much. It amounted to promotion, though they paid you no more. Here in Belgravia the streets were wide, the houses large and grand, their numbers could be easily read and the letterboxes were under porticos, out of the rain and wind. Far better working here than in the City, where streets had been narrow and twisted, houses and offices crammed together on top of each other, separated by complex networks of alleyways, where horses knocked you off your bike, or splattered the ground in front of your tyres with steaming soft manure, and such numbering as there was, wholly irrational. Also, the letters that came in Belgravia were more interesting than the ones that passed between office and office. One could scarcely begrudge their delivery.

  The gold wax seal on this particular envelope was stamped with two crescent moons and a sun, and had been recognized by the sub-postmistress at Mount Pleasant sorting office as coming from the desk of Consuelo, the Duchess of Marlborough. Consuelo was Mistress of the Queen’s Robes, although she was only twenty-four. She had provided her young husband with the two children he required and now had time to spare, and good looks and style aplenty.

  The letter was addressed to Isobel, Countess of Dilberne, 17 Belgrave Square, who also moved in the highest of circles, and was something of a fashion icon: perhaps it contained news of what the Queen Consort would wear on her coronation in the New Year? What the dress would look like, the jewels, the possible new crown, were already a source of speculation, even before a definite date was fixed. The women of the nation wondered and chafed at the delay; the men were less concerned. Enough that there was to be a day’s holiday and free drinks all round when it happened.

  Be that as it may, Vera at the sorting office had tapped her nose when she’d handed over the two crescent moons and the sun and said, ‘Keep your ears open, eh, Fletcher, when you call by number seventeen?’

  ‘Don’t I always,’ Fletcher said, and delivered the letter to the servants’ entrance in the basement, instead of the front door, and had a cup of tea with Mrs Welsh the cook while he was at it, and Lily the lady’s maid, who looked down her nose at him but whom he rather fancied.

  When Reginald the head footman finally brought the letter up to the library, he found Lady Isobel the Countess and her young daughter-in-law, Lady Minnie the Viscountess, packing Christmas gifts for the post. Mrs Neville the housekeeper stood by to fetch brown paper, string and sealing wax as required. Reginald thought the group would look well in a Christmas-card scene, their Ladyships’ heads bent together over the task, a good fire burning in the grate and glittering on their diamond brooches, and the deep red vellum of bound books putting a pink glow on their winter-pale complexions. Both were still in half-mourning for the Old Queen – the Earl being a stickler for convention – which meant that some pale lavender and dove grey did not go amiss amongst the black. The two Ladyships looked pretty and cheerful enough, but it was Reginald’s experience that for the Hedleigh family such scenes existed only to be quickly shattered by some momentous and unanticipated event.

  ‘Adela Hedleigh, of the Rectory at Yatbury,’ remarked Minnie, reading the label written out by Mrs Neville. ‘A maiden aunt, perhaps?’ She had been a Hedleigh wife for more than a year, and new relatives seemed to keep appearing. No one had taken the trouble to list them for her convenience. Social rules were much more complicated here than they were back home in Chicago. Minnie’s father Billy O’Brien gladly welcomed everyone, relative or friend, into his heart and home unless they misbehaved, when he would throw them out, often physically, or even get others to do worse. Her mother Tessa was the same. There was not the layered politeness there was here, no saying things nobody meant, nor was quite expected to believe.

  Lady Isobel laughed and said Adela might well end up a maiden aunt, considering her inheritance. At the moment she was an unmarried girl, fifteen or sixteen, and his Lordship’s niece, only daughter of Robert’s youngest brother Edwin. Edwin had gone into the Church and was reckoned rather strange, indeed, even quite mad and certainly not very nice. He and Robert had had a dreadful quarrel: Edwin had behaved disgracefully. The first son had died in a shocking accident along with his father, which was how Robert, the second son, had come into the title. Yes, there was another brother, Alfred, the third son, who had gone into the army and was now a Brigadier in India, and was mildly preferable to his brother, but not greatly so. ‘Neither of them knows how to behave,’ said Isobel.

  ‘To know how to behave’ was something Minnie, still somewhat awed by the titled company she found herself in, tried very hard to do, and hoped she was succeeding. She longed to know what was in the letter Reginald had brought up, with its great gold wax seal, but knew better than to ask. ‘Pas trop de zèle,’ she had heard his Lordship say more than once, ‘Surtout, pas trop de zèle.’ Above all, not too much enthusiasm.

  ‘It’s not the poor girl’s fault that she has the parents she has,’ remarked Lady Isobel, ‘so I send her a Christmas gift every year. It may well be that one day Adela will seek her family out, though I’m sure one rather dreads the possibility. Edwin is good-looking enough but his wife is very plain and silent, the girl is bound to inherit from her, and Robert cannot abide plain and silent women.’

  Minnie felt this was so unfair a judgement that she was driven to speak up.

  ‘But if she is good enough to receive a Christmas gift, perhaps she is good enough to receive an invitation, even for Christmas itself? Families should be together at Christmas time.’

  At which her mother-in-law looked at her a little coldly and said, ‘Poor little Minnie. You must be missing your mother,’ which was another way of saying, since Minnie’s mother was so awful and everyone knew it, shut up and don’t presume. It was the merest flash of disapproval, but Minnie felt her cheeks burning and tears rise to her eyes. And she did, she did, she missed her mother like anything and she longed to be back with the gypsies-oh. The tune kept coming back to her these days, of the song her mother had sung to her when she was a child going to sleep.

  Oh what care I for your goosefeather bed,

  With the sheets turned down so comely-oh,

  Oh what care I for your house and your land,

  I’m off with the raggle-taggle gypsies-oh!

  Those weren’t the right words: there was a line she’d got wrong, which she couldn’t remember, and perhaps it was as well. It was Arthur she wanted, but Arthur was down at Dilberne Court in the country, with his combustion engines and garages, constructing his race circuit in the estate grounds and finding out what it was like to be Managing Director of J.A.C, the Jehu Automobile Company, and designing the Arnold Model 2, while she, Minnie, kept the Countess company. The Countess was charm and courtesy itself and the shopping trips were fun, and Minnie tried to be interested in fashion, but really she was not.

  Reginald coughed to draw attention to the letter, still unopened, and Isobel deigned to break the seal and open it.

  ‘It’s from Consuelo,’ said Isobel. ‘The seal is that of the Duchess of Marlborough, do you see?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Minnie. Consuelo was a great beauty, came from New York, was a Vanderbilt, and had come to her marriage to the Duke with a railroad fortune. She, Minnie, came from Chicago, was a mere pork-scratchings heiress and her father had endowed less money on his daughter than anyone had hoped, the bottom having suddenly fallen out of the hog market. Railroads, of course, continued to grow from strength to strength. But the whole world knew that when Sunny Marlborough left the church with Consuelo, after their truly grand New York wedding, he had turned to his new wife and told her in the cab that he was in love with someone else, but needed some of the Vanderbilt fortune to save Blenheim Palace from dereliction.

  At lea
st when Arthur and she, Minnie, had left St Martin-in-the-Fields after their wedding, Arthur had nibbled her ear and said he loved her, and only her and would for ever: at least she had Arthur’s love if not quite enough of his attention. And Arthur was always full of good cheer, whereas the reason the Duke was known as Sunny was not only because he was formerly the Earl of Sunderland, but because he had such a miserable, unsmiling nature. Another English trick amongst the titled – to say the opposite of what was meant and assume everyone around got the joke. Well, one learnt, but one had always to be on one’s toes.

  Oh What Care I for Your Goosefeather Bed?

  ‘I’m so very fond of Consuelo,’ Isobel was saying now. ‘She is so very much like a younger Alexandra, has this very long neck, wears chokers with great style, has a tiny waist, a sweet disposition and, loving good jewellery as she does, is just the right person to be Mistress of the Queen’s Robes. How can she not be, Sunny having been appointed Lord High Steward for the occasion; that is to say in overall charge? I do think it is possible to overdo the diamond-choker style, mind you, just a little vulgar and ostentatious. I fear for the Queen. If Consuelo has her way, she’ll have the poor dear’s front so awash with jewels there’ll not be a scrap of flesh showing. I rather wish you could develop a taste for diamonds, Minnie my dear, but you are quite determined never to glitter. Never mind, we love you as you are – and so, apparently, does Consuelo.’

  Consuelo, it seemed, had in her letter required Minnie to participate in the Coronation. She was to walk beside Isobel as they processed down the central aisle at the Abbey directly behind the four Duchesses – Marlborough, Portland, Sutherland and Montrose – who were to hold the canopy for Alexandra. The two ladies of Dilberne, both beauties in their own right (‘Oh, Consuelo is such a flatterer,’ said Isobel, with a slight rise of her eyebrows), were to make sure nothing went amiss – crowns could slip, tiaras go awry, jewels might fall, ermine trims tear – and to make things right as circumstances required.