3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  ‘Do make up your mind, Robert,’ said Isobel. ‘You will fritter everything away.’ By frittering she meant gambling. He was back at the tables with the Prince. ‘At least set the money to work; if it sits in the bank it may simply lose value.’ She was grieving for her father: angry with her daughter, upset by not having been able to go to Silas’s funeral. She accepted that this right must be left to the legitimate family, but she was left with an agitating sense of unfinished business, of impending doom and Robert would come home in the early hours from his jaunts with the Prince, over-exhilarated by winning, downcast by loss. At night, alone, it seemed impossible for her to keep warm.

  Robert’s response to her gloom was to set about putting central heating into the Belgrave Square House, at huge expense, regardless of the fact that since the property was rented, not owned, no value would accrue to him. Isobel did not object too much. She liked to be warm. She cheered up.

  Then Baum came up with another alternative. Gold. Nobody surely could fault gold. He put a prospectus from the Ladysmith Syndicate under his Lordship’s nose and enthused: the idea was to mine in a spot in the Modder Kloof region of the Transvaal, clearly a sure-fire proposal. A ridge of shale and sandstone intersected with promising veins of quartz, ripe for mining, had recently come to the notice of geologists from the Royal Institute. Now the Transvaal was safely in British hands the place swarmed with prospectors. Gold was a safer proposition even than diamonds, which had already made many a humble Briton rich. Why should not gold do the same for the landed gentry? Or platinum? The quartz might contain pitchblende which could yet prove promising. It contained an element called uranium and traces of a strange new substance called radium, an almost pure white alkaline earth metal, which turned black on exposure to the air but emitted a strange blue glow.

  His Lordship consulted the family. Their money was at stake as well as his own. Isobel made no objection. ‘Just put it where you can’t get at it,’ she said. Robert could see the wisdom in this.

  Rosina was by now too absorbed by the weekly meetings of the Fabian Society to give the matter much thought.

  ‘If I argue you’ll fall down dead like Grandfather,’ she said, ‘just to pay me out for being a woman and having a mind of my own. Do what you like.’ Which her father took as assent.

  Arthur had more important things to think about, such as getting down to Nice in France for the ‘Speed Week’ auto race in March, properly outfitted by a new and trusting tailor. His boots and gloves were to be made of sealskin, which was expensive, but light and supple.

  ‘Go for gold,’ Arthur said. ‘If the decision is Wales or Natal, go for Natal. The weather is better and labour is cheaper. Benz and Daimler are exporting there: we need to get into the market too. Do what you think best, Pater.’

  So Pater did. A generous seam of gold was unearthed in the very first weekend and profits began to flow from the Modder Kloof mine. All rejoiced. They were to be rich; the Dilberne family fortune seemed assured.

  The British had learnt how to mow down Zulu hordes, but the irregular tactics of the determined Boers were new and surprising. No one had reckoned on the flooding of the mine by white enemies armed with Mausers and field guns.

  A Solution is Found

  11.50 a.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899

  ‘The problem now, surely, is less how we have come to this pretty pass but what are we are going to do about it,’ said Isobel. Robert, Isobel and Arthur remained sitting around the breakfast table, indifferent to Elsie’s suggestion, expressed in body language rather than words, that she should be allowed to get on, that there was a lot to be done before the dinner tonight, and the early breakfast had already upset the order of things. ‘If Mr Baum is not the best person to be indebted to, he is not the worst. I do not think he would dare foreclose. Imagine Dilberne Court passing into the hands of Mrs Baum, who knows even less than her husband how anything should be done.’

  Her husband smiled at her joke. ‘Of course that won’t happen. But you should not judge poor Mrs Baum too harshly since we know next to nothing about her.’

  Lady Isobel said she had encountered Mrs Baum occasionally at charity events organised by Freddie, Countess d’Asti – she had seemed pleasant and pretty enough, though a rather timid young woman, overdressed for the occasion. Alas, Mrs Baum had tripped on her own dress, stumbled, and in saving herself had broken a valuable Lalique glass lampshade, and then had not had the wit or self-command to simply move her cut hand so that the blood would drip on to the parquet floor rather than a white tufted rug recently imported from China, and especially precious to the Countess. The rug, though instantly treated with white wine and salt, had never been quite the same again and had to have an occasional table placed over it to distract the eye. The wound had bled quite profusely before bandages could be fetched. Mr Baum might plead for a Dilberne invitation all he liked, but it would not be forthcoming. Her Ladyship valued her possessions too much.

  ‘It is sometimes easier to wander off into trivia,’ observed Isobel of her own discourse, ‘than to face the problems at hand. I can see, my dear, that we are in dire straits, and that I am blaming not even the bringer of bad news but the wife of the bringer of bad news. We could always sell Agripin.’

  ‘Oh for Heaven’s sake!’ said his Lordship.

  ‘Do we even have enough to renew the lease of this house, which I believe is to expire in some eighteen months?’

  ‘No,’ said his Lordship.

  ‘Nor can we sell what antiquities and paintings we have without word getting round that we are to be pitied and sold up?’

  We cannot,’ said his Lordship. ‘Nor would my brothers allow it. I suppose I could throw myself beneath the new tram to the Elephant and Castle, Arthur, and leave you to deal with your uncles.’

  ‘I sincerely hope you will not, sir,’ said his son, alarmed.

  ‘Please try to keep to the matter in hand, both of you,’ said Isobel, ‘namely, what is to be done? What are our assets?’

  ‘Sometimes you show a clarity of mind and an ability to speak it that quite daunts me. You can be more frightening than Salisbury,’ said her husband.

  ‘I am always more articulate when Rosina is not in the room,’ said Isobel. ‘She takes up so much of the moral high ground I tend to topple right off. Our assets, my dear, are our children. They have looks, breeding and manners.’

  Arthur, at first taken aback, laughed heartily.

  ‘Rosina? Looks, if one can overlook her height, and breeding, but manners? She terrifies men out of their wits. She killed her own grandfather with a couple of sentences. Word gets round.’

  ‘I wish you would be serious, Arthur,’ complained his mother.

  ‘Even Kate in The Taming of the Shrew found her Petruccio,’ said Robert. ‘But I can see Rosina might present a difficulty. She will be off our hands eventually, I daresay, eventually find some penniless artist or poet willing to marry her. Together they can pursue Utopia and I hope they will be happy. But Arthur, I agree, my dear, is a different matter.’

  ‘I’d rather you did not take my name in vain, Pater. I don’t like the way your minds are working,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Lord Curzon’s wedding to Mary Leiter was a magnificent affair,’ observed Isobel, ‘and much approved by Society. Mary being American and her father being in dry goods was scarcely mentioned. Curzon was penniless at the time. And now look at him. Viceroy of India. And she is a most splendid vicereine. All on her father’s money.’

  ‘Just think of it, Arthur. Viceroy!’

  ‘You are teasing me,’ said Arthur. ‘I will not marry some fat plain American heiress for money.’

  ‘She need not be fat and plain,’ said his father. ‘Mary Leiter is a beauty, and made a most fetching bride.’

  ‘I can discreetly ask around,’ said his mother.

  ‘You will not, Mother,’ said Arthur, and went downstairs to ensure by his supervision that William did no irreversible damage to the boiler of the new Arnold
Jehu.

  The Earl Walks to the House of Lords

  12.30 p.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899

  The Earl of Dilberne decided he might as well go to the House of Lords as not. The crisis in South Africa certainly demanded some attention, and he felt what he realized to be a childish need to be looked on favourably by as many people in high places as possible. The wealthy could afford to be haughty: the poor needed friends, and the more influential the better.

  His walk took him down Constitution Hill towards the Prince’s residence at Marlborough House, around Buckingham Palace and then down Birdcage Walk to the Palace of Westminster.

  The cabriolet, driven by Reginald, since William had been purloined by Arthur to work on the Jehu, followed close behind in case his Lordship encountered mud, embarrassment, or violence of any kind, though the area was both well paved and policed. Since all at 17 Belgrave Square was at sixes and sevens as the household prepared for the evening’s dinner, Reginald was happy enough to get out of the house.

  On a corner near the Palace they encountered a flower girl who, unusually, had not been moved on by the police. The law liked to keep the area clear: there was always the possible, though unlikely, danger of an assault on the Queen by the mentally unhinged or an anarchist terrorist. The child was a pretty little thing, about twelve, perhaps, bare-footed and thin, none too clean, but with golden curls and a sweet mouth. She was selling decorative greenery from her basket – the kind with which Isobel liked to ornament her dining room. Robert remembered the Hans Andersen story of the little match girl, and when he arrived at the House told Reginald to stop on the way home, buy greenery for the house, and pay the child handsomely.

  What did the Bible say? Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. Robert felt that lately he had cast so much bread upon the waters that it was high time some divine munificence came his way.

  ‘Good karma,’ his brother Alfred would say. Alfred had spent time in India.

  It was a pity Robert’s relationship with his brothers remained so bad – when they found out about the Ladysmith fiasco, and his involvement with the project, it would certainly confirm them in their low opinion of his managerial competence. They would have assumed he’d at least put the profits from the sale of their ancestral land into the Welsh coalfields. These were currently booming – those who had chosen coal over diamonds and gold had done well.

  On his way into the House his Lordship passed under a workman’s ladder and found himself crossing his fingers for luck. Or was it to avoid bad luck? He couldn’t remember. Isobel would know. At least he had Isobel. He was sorry for the Prince; married to a deaf Danish woman at his mother’s bidding. But he could not cheer up his Highness for ever. There had to be an end to gadding about. It was just too expensive.

  Arthur Proposes to His Mistress

  12.40 p.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899

  Even as Robert crossed his fingers for good luck, his son, Arthur was proposing to his mistress. She lived a mere ten minutes’ walk from Belgrave Square, in the opposite direction from the House of Lords. Many in the Lords enjoyed the stroll to Shepherd Market, with its cobbled streets and pretty little houses, after the close of business for the day. The brave, most agreed, deserved the fair, and the sons of the brave likewise.

  ‘Will you marry me, Flora?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Flora indulgently. She was a plump bigbosomed girl with wayward tendrils of blond hair, blue-eyed and pink-cheeked: her mouth was generous and kind and she wore lipstick, which marked her for the kind of woman she was – that is to say, not the kind cut out for matrimony. She was wearing a yellow satin wrap which fell apart at any excuse to reveal her right breast, swelling, silky to the feel and with a small pink-tipped nipple.

  After Arthur had checked that the Jehu was not going to blow its boiler, he had walked the quarter of a mile to 5 Half Moon Street, knocked on the yellow front door with the brass knocker and roused Flora from her slumber: he felt entitled to wake her since he paid her rent, and her drink bills, and paid her a small allowance on top of that, on the understanding that she would offer Arthur, and only Arthur, her most agreeable hospitality.

  ‘How is that silly?’ he asked, offended. ‘If I’m already married they can’t ask me to marry someone else.’

  Flora just laughed, and her bosom shook and the yellow wrap fell yet more open. The satin was appliquéd with velvet splashes of red flowers, Japanese style.

  ‘I have my pride,’ she said. ‘Run along little boy and marry someone suitable. It needn’t make any difference to you and me. You can still come and visit me.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem much to ask,’ he said. ‘Considering how much you have from me each week.’

  He ran his hands up beneath the wrap. She was wearing silk knickers with no crotch and his fingers encountered a soft fringe of curly hair.

  ‘You’ve only bought bits of me,’ she said, ‘not all of me. You’ve bought my body not my soul. One day I’ll meet a man who’ll really marry me and take me away from all this. Then I won’t need you any more.’

  It was every whore’s fantasy, he knew that, and most unlikely to happen, but still panic rose in his throat. He could not do without her.

  ‘Perhaps I have already,’ she said, pouting.

  It occurred to Arthur that he hadn’t seen the silk wrap before. He knew nothing about women’s garments but it looked expensive. How had she managed to afford it? He’d seen his mother wear one vaguely like it.

  ‘Is that new?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course it’s not new,’ she said, ‘you’ve seen it a hundred times. It’s a gift from long before your time.’

  ‘It had better be,’ he said, darkly. ‘Or all this stops.’

  ‘All this,’ Flora said, ‘all this! A tiny little rented house in Mayfair?’ And she said he wasn’t the only one in the world: others would be happy to take over from him. ‘The Prince built Lily Langtry a most splendid house at the seaside, where they could be together at weekends: he loaded her with jewellery and introduced her to all his fine friends. When I look at this little wrist I see not a single diamond upon it. It is a disgrace.’

  ‘You are not Lily Langtry,’ he said.

  ‘They say I look very like her,’ Flora said, tucking her left breast back beneath the yellow wrap so a red flower showed in its entirety. ‘Except I’m not so thin and pale.’

  Arthur fell upon her and steered her back, giggling and cooperative, towards the crumpled bed. He saw no sign that anyone else but she ever occupied it. He wrenched the wrap aside and if he tore it he was glad. It was not of course that he loved her; she was only a whore, he told himself, and that he did not want to be cheated. If you had a title and money people lined up to cheat you. You had to be careful. Flora had promised exclusivity, and she should keep to it.

  ‘But you know,’ she said, as her lovely warm wet mouth groped for his intimate parts, ‘I should like a bracelet – not diamond. Diamonds are for wives: icy and sharp. Rubies are best, warm and passionate. I’d do a lot for a man who gave me rubies.’

  Bet you would, he thought, as her mouth closed and pleasure stopped thought and prudence both. It occurred to him as he went under that if he did marry some rich heiress he would be able to afford ruby bracelets for his mistress. If the Prince of Wales could have an official mistress whom his Danish wife apparently quite liked, really one could do anything without anyone getting upset.

  Lady Isobel Instructs the Staff

  12.40 p.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899

  At the same time that Robert was crossing his fingers, and Arthur was counting out the cash for Flora after proposing to her, Isobel was talking through the final touches of the evening’s dinner party with Cook and Mrs Neville. Both women were well trained and reliable: Mrs Welsh was a particularly fine cook, as was evident from the fact that her Ladyship had had to ward off several offers to buy her services, noticeably from the Countess d’Asti. And Mrs Neville the
housekeeper, when helped by Grace, could achieve a most attractive table, napkins fluted, cloths spotless and starched, silver and glassware polished and sparkling, centrepieces elegant and of the moment.

  Impressions of her Ladyship’s dressed dinner table had even been sketched once or twice and published in the Illustrated London News. The Prince himself was happy to dine at 17 Belgrave Square. Once Princess Alexandra herself had been a guest, a rare compliment.

  Grace sat quietly taking notes, which her Ladyship would later consult, the better to judge the success of the menu. A responsible society hostess left nothing to chance. This morning her Ladyship showed a degree of anxiety in the slight tremble of her fingers and a high colour – not in the apple of her cheeks, which would have been becoming, but around her nose, which was not. Grace wondered what news Mr Baum had brought. Elsie’s garbled ramblings in the servant’s hall about the African mine being flooded and the family ruined had been dismissed as hysteria, and Grace was inclined to agree. The rich stayed rich. Mr Baum had been the one to be upset, muttering an imprecation and spitting upon the steps as he left.

  Her Ladyship’s discomposure, Grace concluded, was most likely to do with tonight’s dinner. His Lordship had once on impulse asked the Prince to ‘come round tomorrow for a bite to eat’, greatly to her Ladyship’s upset, since invitations for that evening’s event had long been issued, a table plan drawn up, and a fitting menu organized, as his Lordship would well know. To make matters worse the Prince had responded with a vague ‘what a pleasure, unless of course something turns up’, thus leaving her Ladyship in a state of uncertainty. Her Ladyship had tried to make a joke of it, asking if that meant Daisy Greville turning up and his Lordship said that was one way of putting it, and both had laughed, but Grace could tell that, like the Queen, her Ladyship was not amused. On that occasion the Prince had not turned up, and all had been well, but if his Lordship could do it once he could do it again, and this was perhaps what her Ladyship feared, particularly as tonight young Lady Peaburton was to be one of the guests.