The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Never you mind that, my lady, just put it all out of your mind. I know just who to ask, and I will do so – on your behalf.’

  ‘Could you, Jenkins?’

  ‘Yes, my lady. I knows someone, someone in the household of Lady Childhays, someone who will put me in the picture, and then we can get back at her, as we shall, my lady. Just leave it to Jenkins. Jenkins knows what to do, and Jenkins always will.’

  ‘Oh, Jenkins, you are a wonder.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  There was a long silence following this outburst of flattery, and then, unprompted, as Jenkins slowly drew on Daisy’s silk stockings, and clipped them to their suspenders, Daisy remembered that it would probably be just as well to show herself to be more heartily grateful than ever to her maid.

  ‘Oh, and Jenkins, you know that silver cream jug you so admired the other day? How about if I put that together with the samovar – in my will, I mean? For you, to be left to you?’

  ‘Thank you, my lady.’

  Jenkins turned back to my lady’s wardrobe. Any more London Seasons like this one and she might well end up being the grateful recipient of half the Evesham silver. It was not entirely impossible, she thought, feeling suddenly, for Jenkins, really quite smug.

  Phyllis of course had grown careless about her visits to her secret Vice, but it was not her mother who had noticed, it was her maid. Evie, who had known Phyllis since she was a child, but not particularly liked her for the past couple of years, had also noted the presence of The Pickwick Papers in the Vice Admiral’s room.

  She had noticed it, but unlike Lady Childhays she had also noticed that the bookmark, a silk one made by Portia herself, one of many sewn during a particularly snowy winter in the country, was moving slowly forward, page by page into the centre of the book. Someone, for it was certainly not the Vice Admiral, who took little interest even in the newspapers, was reading to him.

  It was an irresistible temptation to follow her charge. But Miss de Nugent, Evie often thought, had eyes in the back of her head, and no sooner had Evie decided to tail her of a morning when there were no other servants about, and Lady Childhays was out having a fitting for her ball gown, or paying morning calls, than, the maid noted, the visits or the readings seemed to suddenly stop, and the bookmark in The Pickwick Papers remained firmly at the same page as the day before.

  So Evie knew that Miss Phyllis must be paying secret visits to the Vice Admiral, but she simply could not catch her at it.

  ‘She is elusive, that one!’ Evie informed her dictionary every night, while trying to look up yet another word to learn. ‘She is elusive. She is cunning as a vixen. She is …’ She paused, leaning over her beloved book. ‘She is – precocious too, that’s what she is!’ She thumbed through the book once more, attempting to look up the word despite being unsure of its spelling. ‘No, that’s wrong. No, she is – she is just elusive, that will have to do for the moment. Elusive, and cunning too.’

  She lay back against her one pillow. She knew that the wretched girl was paying visits to the upstairs room. She knew that she was spending time alone with the Vice Admiral. It was just a question of catching her at it. Sometimes she thought she could scent a whiff of her perfume on the air, or see a thread from her dress. But of course now that the Vice Admiral was allowed out of his room to take turns around the gardens, or if it was raining around the ballroom, it had become more difficult to know, for, while these bouts of exercise were always taken at a time when no-one was about, nevertheless the more sane and less incomprehensible Vice Admiral Ward became, the less certain Evie was that her suspicions were well founded.

  More than anything it was the look in Miss Phyllis’s eyes, the spring to her step that betrayed her to her now less than devoted maid.

  But this was all before Evie had been, of a sudden, and from the shadows of the lower end of the overcrowded servants’ room, approached by one of the valets after supper the previous evening.

  He was a cunning kind of rascal was Evans. He had what Evie could only call a ‘lurgy look to him’. Much more the kind of man to be found working in a London house. Not at all the type to take himself off to the country. He was for hire all right was Evans. And not only that, but he had a hard look to him, and none of the maids trusted him, or liked him, with good reason, Evie had heard.

  So Evie was less than happy when the man approached her, but something in his manner, the hardness of his eyes, the cunning of him, had made her stop and listen to what he had to say none the less.

  ‘A certain personage, Miss Evie, has approached me wanting my help. An old acquaintance like from Wales, a long time ago. A Biblical amount of time, I should say. But here’s how it was, it seems. Our mothers’ brothers were cousins, or some such. Anyway, once upon a time our grandfathers were both Valley, and that is enough, wouldn’t you say, Miss Evie? It is enough for us Taffies to have relatives in the Valley in common, I would say, myself, I would.’

  For herself Evie had not wanted to say, nor cared to do so. She had not been in service all her life, or more to the point lasted in service all her life – without a breath of scandal, what was more – without developing a sixth sense of danger, of what should or should not be avoided. This sixth sense was essential for servants. They had to be aware of what might be about to happen, before it happened, if they were to survive. Without it, Evie was all too aware, she herself could not have avoided accusations of theft, or breakages. She could not have avoided wandering hands – butler’s hands, steward’s hands, footmen’s hands, sometimes even, alas, guests’ hands – without that beloved sixth sense of something that was about to happen that would not be to her credit.

  Being a servant meant that you were never so poor that you did not eat, but it also meant that you never slept quite easy in your bed either. There was always, in a big, rich house especially, someone new arriving, someone who could be out for you, or out for your job, or simply an evil mischief-maker who just liked to make life uncomfortable for other people.

  No, ‘Miss Evie’ had not survived all those years with Lady Childhays by being an innocent idiot.

  So, now, staring into what seemed to her to be Evans’s cunning eyes, made worse by drinking too much porter, Evie stood quite still, her expression one of cold reserve, her dislike for the man quite evident. But she nevertheless did not move away, for she knew that he had something to tell her – that beloved sixth sense again – and for some reason that she could not name she knew that what Evans had to say might involve either Lady Childhays, or Miss Phyllis, or possibly both. After all, there was more to the London Season, and all the servants knew it, than just the frills and the folderols. There was politicking everywhere, downstairs as well as up.

  There had been, in past Seasons, as Evie well knew, enough excitements to make the Gunpowder Plot pale into relative insignificance. There had been the planting of stolen jewellery on several famous occasions. Also the planting or sending of letters – letters filled with ridicule for husbands who were ineffectual in the bedroom or, worse, husbands who were known to like their own sex. There had been gambling debts unpaid, and notes redeemed behind backs; there had been mistresses unceremoniously dumped, only, to the fury of their former lovers, to end up in more select, and sometimes even royal, beds.

  And all this, all the essentials, as always, accomplished not by the protagonists of the dramas themselves, but by their servants. After all who else but the servants could run to and fro between the houses with messages for assignations, or warnings of dangers to come?

  In one case it was rumoured there had even been a specially made underground passage involved, and servants running to and fro underneath the road between the houses connected by it. Running possibly with amorous notes, or blackmail letters, or just with flowers and love tokens. It was the servants more than anyone who were privy to the sighs and the groans of the lovelorn, or the recently forsaken. It was the valet who held the sore head of the cuckolded husband, and the maid who put b
urnt feathers under the nose of her mistress when it was discovered that she had committed the only sin for which Society would never forgive her – namely to be found out.

  Sometimes Evie thought that the intrigues of the older generation were one of the main ingredients of the Season, that it was the love affairs of the older women, more even than the marrying of their wretched daughters, that brought the wives and mistresses so eagerly to town every Season with such monotonous regularity. After all, a love affair in the country was an impossibility, given that even the early denuding of a gardenia flower was commented on, by everyone, all the time.

  No, by and large, everyone knew that love affairs were for busy London. For cities where the population wrestled and jostled past the people involved, and they were able to escape unnoticed by any but themselves, at least for a little while.

  And of course the love affairs were always conducted by the most respectable in front of, sometimes, the most cunning and eager for gain – namely their servants. For some reason many Society people thought that their servants were either deaf or blind, and not as self-serving as themselves, and so were quite happy to conduct their love affairs in front of those same all-seeing, all-hearing witnesses, to the delight of their employees who could not, quite understandably given their low pay, but seek to find some profit for themselves in their new-found knowledge.

  The look in Evans’s eyes was therefore not unfamiliar to Evie. It told of some sort of gain for himself, some monetary accruement with which, judging from his breath, he would be subscribing to a further pint or two of porter rather than to a new edition of the Holy Bible.

  Any minute now, Evie realised, she too would be expected to display that same gleam of avarice – another new word – yes, avarice and greed that was positively glowing in Evans’s porter-ridden eyes.

  ‘So this same relative, as you might call them, wants my help. And they are quite prepared to pay for it too, and doubtless yours as well Miss Evie. I have not any doubt on that score. She has taken the situation that badly, has this personage in question, that she is quite prepared to pay for just and honest retribution, and most handsomely, I am sure, Miss Evie.’

  ‘And from what source is this wealth to come? Not criminal, I would hope?’

  ‘No, indeed, Miss Evie, not criminal, nothing like that, God bless you. No, you need have no fear on that score, and what’s more, God bless her, she does not mind to what lengths we go to obtain this quite just retribution. No, God bless you, you need not worry on that account.’

  ‘I have no idea why God should come into this conversation at such regular intervals, really I have not. If I were you, Evans, I should leave Him well out of it. He might impinge on your conscience during the conversation and stop the very words in your mouth. Or He might overhear you, and strike you down for thinking or planning something that might not be to the whole advantage of this household. That’s what God might do, Evans, so I should leave Him out of it, really I would.’

  ‘You’re a very good woman, Miss Evie. The best, I would say. And loyal, I knows that. To Lady Childhays, that is, but not I think to Miss Phyllis, who if I may say so is not at all the thing, and quite likely, to my way of thinking, to bring disgrace on the family, if what I have heard of her has anything to do with it.’

  Evie’s attitude to Evans changed in an instant. Evans was obviously a great deal shrewder than she had at first realised, and while he might have an understandable weakness for porter, on the other hand it was obviously not so great that he had not spotted the black sheep at Tradescant House.

  Evans now leaned towards Evie, who braved the smell of the porter the better to hear the rest of his speech.

  ‘I have seen potential disgrace in a certain party’s behaviour.’ He looked behind them, and then went on, his voice even lower, ‘I have seen, for myself, mind, behaviour such as is reprehensible in a young lady well brought up. What with her visiting, on her own too, the Vice Admiral, morning after morning after morning, if what I have heard and seen on occasion is the truth. And that is not all, I believe. For before this, as I understand it, the young lady set about disgracing a certain other person’s protég— pro— protég—’

  ‘Protégée. It’s a French word, Evans. It means someone what is being protected by you, or being looked after in some way.’

  ‘I never was one for foreign languages. For a Welshman, mind, learning English was bad enough, I tell you.’ He smiled briefly. ‘Anyway, this friend of mine, her mistress has not taken kindly to what has happened to her – you know, protégée – and that, and she wants you to do something about it. She wants you to retaliate on their behalf, on behalf of her mistress and herself. She wants you to punish Miss Phyllis for them. And, Miss Evie, knowing how much she gets under all our fingernails, perhaps for us too, do you not think? For she has not left us entirely unmarked, has she, Miss Phyllis? And let us face it, there are some who might blame you for her behaviour, which is too terrible to think of, but as I understand it it is not unusual for the maid to be blamed for the young mistress’s carryings-on. Not keeping a proper eye, and so on, and so forth.’

  Evie prided herself on her good nature, on her ability to forgive and forget. At least, until that moment she always had, but now, faced with the reality of Miss Phyllis’s deception, of knowing that she had not been mistaken in her charge, that she had been visiting the Admiral, and alone, she felt a well of indignation, a positive ball of fire, of fury, that she had seldom felt before.

  She had always suspected Miss Phyllis, too much the favourite of her father in Evie’s opinion, of being a spoilt hussy, a madam, a hoity-toity deceiving little number not worthy of her mother’s love and devotion, and now here was the positive proof.

  ‘In what way did she disgrace your friend’s protégée, Evans?’ Evie asked, her eyes narrow and hard, and her heart still beating with fury.

  Evans looked grave now, so grave that Evie could not even guess at what he was about to say.

  ‘She made a joke at her expense, would you know, Miss Evie? A cruel joke about her hat, when they were out riding, and as a consequence the poor young lady has only to enter a ballroom, or go riding in Rotten Row – even without the hat – to meet with laughter, and conniving surreptitious laughter at that.’

  ‘A joke?’

  There was a small silence, and then Evie’s eyes, already narrowed, became, it seemed to Evans of a sudden, like slits in the medieval castle that was her face. The nose the tower, the mouth the moat, and the eyes now slits in the walls of the building, ready to rain down arrows on Miss Phyllis, the viper in her poor mother’s, as well as her poor devoted maid’s, bosom.

  ‘That would be Miss Phyllis all over, do you know that, Mr Evans?’

  Evie sighed heavily, and so did Evans, she with fury at her charge, and he with satisfaction that she had for the first time elevated him to ‘Mr’.

  ‘Yes,’ Evie continued, ‘that would be Miss Phyllis all over. Always knows best, and always has done. Always ready to put a spoke in someone else’s wheels, and never at her own expense. Well, well, well, so now, on behalf of your friend and her mistress, we had better put a spoke in her wheels, Mr Evans, had we not?’

  Evans smiled and held out a large, lined fist. ‘Shake my hand on it, Miss Evie. You feel the same as I do, mind. What we might call a positive surge of honest indignation. After all, why should this poor protégée, this luckless young girl, see, the innocent young lady, be the butt of a joke and have her chances ruined by Miss Phyllis? I ask you, why should she?’

  ‘Indeed, Mr Evans, precisely my own feelings on the subject, and always will be, I promise you. Miss Phyllis is a wanton and a deceiver, and as such we must act in our own best lights, and I for one cannot wait. She has been a thorn in my side all her life, and now I shall be quite happy to ram a spoke in any or all of her wheels, that I can assure you.’

  ‘We are as one, Miss Evie, as one.’

  Honesty of intent, belief in the goodness of their inte
ntion, and unity of purpose shone out of both their eyes as they pumped each other’s hands up and down, so much so that Evie quite forgot in the excitement of the moment to ask just what her cut of the prize might be, but only agreed to meet with a plan in mind the following day.

  Aunt Tattie was feeling vaguely excited. It was not just that she had been included in all the plans for the forthcoming ball for darling little Phyllis, but she had become more and more the confidante of her house guest, Richard Ward.

  It had come about in a most gentle way, which was just as well, since Tattie always did have a marked preference for gentle ways in everything.

  She had been seated, as she was daily, with her new prayer book – Thoughts On Piety by A Monsignor – when the Vice Admiral had been brought into the newly sunny garden by Evans, who was acting as his valet.

  They had not spoken at first. He had taken turn and turn about, and Aunt Tattie had noted, from beneath her still quite long eyelashes, that he was walking perfectly steadily, and that he had a less flushed look to his face, and that all in all he was looking a great deal less like her brother Lampard, and a great deal more like a normal English gentleman.

  The next day, at the usual quiet hour, they had repeated the same routine. Aunt Tattie seated in the same place, and still on the same (rather laboured) thought of the undoubtedly inestimable Monsignor, and the Vice Admiral toddling past at really quite a good clip, when she raised her eyes, and this time allowed herself to speak. She thought, since it was her garden in which he was exercising, that it was perfectly permissible to engage him in conversation of some sort or another, for when all was said and done they could not very well continue to ignore each other without both seeming rude.

  He must have thought the same, for he stopped and turned round and came to rest in front of her Arts and Crafts bench.