3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  ‘But I haven’t got a brain, Minnie, and you have. You will be easily bored.’ She looked at her daughter with sudden alarm. ‘It’s all very well dressing up and playing at Lords and Ladies, but you’d be such a long way from home. Supposing you were lonely.’

  One thing to persuade a daughter to marry when you think she will not, quite another when you think she is likely to do it. She said as much to Minnie. Minnie should think long and hard about the man she married. Some women, these days, even chose to stay spinsters rather than put up with a man.

  ‘But I thought you wanted grandchildren, Mama. And Papa is right, I blotted my book so badly no one I’d accept would accept me, for all my money. Even if I had stayed a good girl, there’d always have been too many like me on the market, and it is a market: Papa certainly thinks so. All my friends had declarations of love before they were twenty and I never had a single one.’

  ‘You will say these clever things that put men off.’

  ‘No, it is worse than that. I am perfectly good-looking but there is something about me just not very attractive to men, and I must face it. I don’t know why, it’s just like that.’

  ‘I do. You look at men as if you judge them.’

  ‘But I do judge them. What can they expect? They are not gods; they are just male human beings. How can I pretend otherwise? Stanton was the only one who ever said he loved me, and he was mad. Or so Father says, not to mention a whole team of alienists. What am I to make of that? No, I will do without love and marry suitably and please everyone. This young man seems totally suitable.’

  Tessa sat down heavily. She burst into tears at the shock of it all, indeed she howled, so noisily that the chamber maid knocked on the door and asked if everything was all right. Minnie assured her everything was, and sent her away. She went over to her mother and embraced her.

  ‘You just cannot be upset, Ma. This was what you wanted. You tell me time is running out for me and I am not likely to do any better. Arthur and I talked it over as we walked round the Serpentine. He was so bored in the museum I took pity on him and we agreed to go for a walk. The young Austrians stayed behind, they are so accustomed to being stiff and formal the museum seemed a garden of earthly delights to them. Arthur and I spoke freely. I like that about him. He says what he thinks. Few men do: if they did most women would run from the room screaming.’

  Tessa gaped at her daughter. Minnie in England seemed a different person than the one she knew at home. The one in the USA was withdrawn, discrete and diffident, and had indeed attracted few beaux – partly because her father suspected every young man who came along to be a fortune-hunter and drove them all away – and partly because if her father didn’t do that, she did, wilfully or no. How Stanton, who it transpired had already spent months in a lunatic asylum suffering from an ailment called manic-depression – had succeeded where many had failed, Tessa could not imagine. This English Minnie had gone to the museum wearing an uncorseted gown which showed her ankles above her little buttoned boots, and if you looked at her from behind you could see the actual movement of her hips as she walked. It was very daring, and so very much in advance of anything that was done at home.

  ‘In suiting others we suit ourselves,’ said her daughter now, more blithely. ‘Arthur’s parents want him to marry someone rich, and I turn up. My parents want me married and settled down before I do something else dreadful, and he turns up. We are obviously made for each other. Fate has decreed it. He is taking me to Rotten Row on Saturday but the style of horse riding over here is very different – he warned me. He’s quite a jolly man, really.’

  Tessa smiled, and looked her daughter up and down. She saw everything that she had made, and, behold, it was very good.

  ‘Whadd’ya know, Melinda,’ she said. ‘Well – whadd’ya know!’

  A Proposal at Second Sight

  1 p.m. Saturday, 4th November 1899

  The outing had been more than diverting. Minnie hadn’t felt so cheerful since the blow of discovering Stanton’s deception, and the depths of it. The man who defied convention, who despised marriage as a bourgeois fantasy, was already married, had two children, and a history of insanity. She had vowed never to trust a man again, let alone love one. But now, on the banks of the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park – how she loved London! – Arthur had wound a twig around her wedding finger and said, ‘There, we are officially engaged.’ Then they had pecked each other on the cheek.

  ‘Are you serious?’ she had asked.

  ‘I am completely serious,’ he said. ‘It is time I got married. One has to look after the succession, you know. My mother has decided you will do, not least because you are a wealthy woman and know how to behave. Your family has decided I will do because I am a viscount, eventually to be an earl, not as good as a duke but certainly better than a baron. You will not interfere with my steam cars: I will not interfere with your little artistic sketches. Once we have achieved two sons, one for the title and one spare in case of illness and accident, we will both be free to go our own ways.’

  ‘I must have time to think about this,’ she said. ‘You disappoint me. You seemed a woman of quick decision.’

  ‘Oh very well,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it. One could go further and fare worse.’

  The expression on his face did not alter. He just blinked a little.

  ‘We will wait three months before we announce the engagement,’ he then said, ‘for the sake of Society’s reaction, and for the sake of the household, which would otherwise have hysterics. We must show some sign of developing passion between us. The servants like a show of true love. It makes the crops grow, according to a Scottish wiseacre called Frazer, as reported by my sister Rosina, who is very learned and goes to lots of lectures. Rosina is anxious that I get married to save her the necessity, though you may not be quite what she has in mind. The harvest has been poor lately and though I doubt that our marriage will put an end to the depredations of Free Trade, it will cheer the estate workers no end.’

  ‘I can see that is important,’ she said. ‘My father maintains that happy hogs are profitable hogs.’

  ‘So over the next months I will pretend to woo you, and you will pretend to be doubtful about accepting me. Then you will capitulate, and we will declare our true love. We will tell no one, except possibly my sister Rosina, who you have not yet met, and loves a secret. She is very tall and more like a man than a woman. I hope she doesn’t put you off. She is very advanced, and I advise you to disapprove of her views in front of my parents, especially my mother, though I have no idea whether you’ll disapprove of them or not.’

  ‘You are putting a great deal of trust in me,’ said Minnie. ‘My mother is very good-natured and loves to buy clothes and tease my father, but she doesn’t take formalities very seriously. I imagine I will have to take many things very seriously if I am to be an adequate Lady of the Manor at Dilberne Court.’

  ‘I will drive you down there soon so you can inspect it. We may have to take a chaperone. Perhaps we could find someone quieter than your mother? Though I have nothing against her; she seems a very jolly woman.’

  ‘She is,’ said Minnie, ‘and as for a chaperone, please realize I am an American. In the new world, young women manage very well without being watched all the time.’

  ‘I can see it would be more fun without one, though I am not sure that I approve. But there will be staff waiting for us at the other end. The place is Jacobean with all kinds of pompous bits added on through the centuries, but still really quite pretty, even quaint in a large kind of way – there are forty-five bedrooms – but not very comfortable. In becoming a viscountess you will sacrifice a great deal of comfort, and will have to live with a great many dreary family portraits. It will be hard work.’

  If indeed Arthur did as he said, and drove her down to Dilberne Court, Minnie would know that he was serious. As it was she could not be completely sure. His voice had a slightly jeering quality, as if he were mocking her. American men spoke from the h
eart when they spoke to women. English men spoke as if through some emotional filter made of flannel: it was hard to know what they were really about.

  ‘I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease,’ she quoted, ‘but the doctrine of the strenuous life. Theodore Roosevelt said that earlier this year. I met him at a reception after he spoke in Chicago. It was a wonderful speech, about the feminization of America. My father said it might be true in New York but it couldn’t be said of Chicago.’

  ‘Was he wearing yellow gloves?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Minnie said, confused.

  ‘We were guests at his wedding in St George’s Hanover Square ten years or so ago. He was wearing yellow gloves. It was such a foggy day it was just as well. Mr Roosevelt’s gloves were about all you could see in the church at all. I thought perhaps it was what all Americans wore to their weddings. But maybe it was just a safety measure because of the fog.’

  ‘Oh you are dreadfully sharp,’ she said, ‘and cynical, and not at all what I’d thought Englishmen to be, but I like that. And so – we have friends in common in the person of Teddie Roosevelt.’

  ‘And we have not had a single fog since you came to the country,’ said Arthur. ‘You must bring good cheer. I hope you paint bright cheerful scenes?’

  ‘Landscapes, mostly,’ she said. ‘Wide plains and large skies. I daresay I will have to bring them down to English haystack level – your galleries are full of such paintings – when I become a proper English lady.’

  ‘So long as you are not an impressionist,’ he said, ‘or you will make our fogs worse. In Oscar Wilde’s estimation, it is art that created them in the first place, in particular the works of impressionist painters.’

  ‘I know,’ said Minnie. ‘I think we will get on very well. Wilde talks about the wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down the streets, blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows. The current climate of London can only be entirely due to this particular school of art.’

  ‘Don’t be deceived, Minnie. May I call you Minnie, not Miss O’Brien? You don’t seem at all like a Miss O’Brien. I must warn you I am primarily an engines man. I only know about Wilde because Rosina made me come to a talk at the Slade where they were discussing a book called Imitations of Art. I yawned all the way through to make her angry, which she was.’

  ‘But Imitations of Art was part of my course at the Institute too,’ she said. She knew now was the moment to mention Stanton Turlock, but she did not. Time enough later.

  ‘Obviously we were meant for each other,’ he said. It was a pity that his voice still had its slightly facetious note. ‘Here, let me try to kiss you, and you will pull away and I will look most upset, and so we will continue until it is time to declare our most practical and convenient troth.’

  He bent to kiss her – her head came up to his shoulder – but she did not pull away. For his part he did not object or look upset but kissed her on the lips. His lips felt soft in the middle but quite hard and firm round the edges. Stanton Turlock’s lips had been the other way round. She preferred Arthur’s, which quite startled her. She had thought she would never fancy another man again. Not that Stanton had done much kissing or wooing. He proceeded straight to the point but with such conviction it had been impossible to resist. A gentle suitor would make a change.

  ‘I quite look forward to marrying you,’ she said. Were they joking, were they not?

  ‘We might even fall in love,’ he said. ‘That would be most convenient. I do not deny that it would be better if you were one of us, obviously, but the ones of us available at the end of the season are quite unbearable to look at, and mostly rather poor. All the rich ones have been snapped up.’

  ‘My father sent me to Europe to buy a husband and a title,’ said Minnie, ‘and he will pay generously. We get on very well, on the whole. His settlement will certainly be more than enough to pay off all your family debts. My mother can persuade my father to do anything. He worships the ground she walks upon. She wants grandchildren and would love them to have titles. They mean a lot in America. This is the kind of talk that is usually left to lawyers but shall we simply get on with it ourselves?’

  ‘We already are,’ he said, ‘I appreciate it.’ So since she was declaring her assets, she added that she also had a few hundred thousand dollars in a bank account in London, it suiting her father’s tax arrangements to have her keep it there. ‘I could always “borrow” from that if I had to, though I would rather not.’

  She also suggested that since she was the only child, the sole heir to the O’Brien Meat Company, to have her as his wife would open up lines of credit for anyone who had the great name Dilberne – enough to buy new harvesting machinery to put their acres back into profit again, not to mention purchasing any number of steam cars, or electric, or even cars with internal combustion engines. She hoped that would compensate for the vulgar absurdity of the nature of her father’s business.

  He did not deny any of that, but merely remarked, ‘There is no future in the combustion engine, unless we can figure out some better way of compressing the fuel–air mixture it requires. Even if it can be done, water is free and all around us: petroleum has to be refined and is expensive and there must be an end to digging it out of the earth.’

  Then he observed that his mother might find having the O’Brien Meat Company in the family something to hide rather than celebrate, but he did not think his father would be anything other than heartily relieved.

  ‘My father is very good at acquiring and spending money, just very bad at paying it back. I must admit I take after him. You will be quite horrified to hear about my tailor’s bills.’

  Then he took her hands in his – he had traces of black engine oil beneath his nails, just as Stanton always had green oil paint – and said that even if her father refused them a penny he might very well still marry her. Better an entertaining life than a dull one. ‘Don’t you agree?’

  Minnie had found herself blushing. At the beginning she had been vastly entertained by Stanton; in the end unkind people had forced her to look at the truth. He was a liar, a cheat and a betrayer, even a male nymphomaniac, and, according to her mother’s doctor, suffered from a manic-depressive psychosis. Until he became violent she hadn’t even noticed. She thought it better not to bring the subject up with Arthur. Young men could be very high-minded. They liked their wives to be virgins, and she liked Arthur.

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ she said fervently. ‘I have to confess that my real name is Melinda, but nobody calls me that.’

  ‘I like it,’ he said.

  ‘Now, Mama,’ Minnie said to her mother over the next morning’s breakfast. ‘I didn’t mean to tell you all this and you are to keep it to yourself. People can be very strange. Tell no one yet that Arthur and I have already reached an agreement. Look how upset you were yesterday, for no real reason at all, other than that we were being practical, when it would have been nice if we were being romantic.’

  Tessa said she wasn’t one for keeping secrets; they seemed to speak themselves when she was around, but she could see the sense of it. She would keep mum. She asked how they had parted yesterday and Minnie said that Arthur had delivered her in a cab back to the hotel, and they had been careful to give the concierge, Mr Eddie, the impression that as a romance this was in its very early, merely friendly stage. She had offered Arthur a limp hand and he had touched it with his lips, through her gloves, in the most formal way.

  ‘And did he suggest you meet up again?’ asked Minnie’s mother.

  ‘We are to go riding together in Hyde Park in a week or so,’ said Minnie, ‘but he has to do some work on his automobile first.’

  ‘Typical male,’ said her mother. ‘But I suppose that’s better than nothing.’

  A Matter of Reputation

  5.15 p.m. Saturday, 4th November 1899

  ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,’ Mr Eddie had said in the lobby to the under-manager, gazing after Minnie’s retreati
ng back when she arrived back from her walk in the Park with Arthur. She’d been wearing an uncorseted red velvet gown from Liberty which followed the lines of her body, an unusual sight in a smart hotel like Brown’s. More such dresses were to be seen in the Ritz, which catered for a younger crowd. ‘Someone ought to warn that poor young man.’

  To the outside world, Mr Eddie, red-faced and smiling and getting on for fifty, seemed the soul of good nature but was in truth a weary and resentful man, sending guests off as he did to shows he would never see, restaurants where he would never eat, delivering hot water bottles in the middle of the night to chilly maiden ladies, and expensive lady bed-companions for men who travelled alone. He passed on information about guests, mostly for money but occasionally on moral grounds. Mr Eddie had not yet had word from Grace to the effect that the O’Brien girl was to have her reputation protected.

  Mr Eddie often thought how sensible it would be if only the chilly maidens and the rampant men could get together, but that was not how the world worked. Also, it would be very hard on his pocket. A hot water bottle went on the bill at two shillings with usually a sixpenny tip for him: a lady companion of really high quality could cost as much as twenty-five pounds for a short visit, fifty pounds for the night, and a fiver for him. Once he had been given a tenner, but the lady in question was indeed a lady, and did it for fun, not because it was her vulgar profession.

  He liked Grace, whom he saw when she was about her Ladyship’s various errands, delivering letters, presenting her card, welcoming her guests, collecting packages from abroad. They could share their discontent with so many of the inequitable ways of the modern world – the class system, the oppression of the proletariat and so on. He thought that one day he might ask her to marry him, though perhaps he was too old to change his ways. They could join their nest eggs together, buy a little house, and start their own household. But then they might start complaining about each other, instead of she about the other servants, or he the hotel guests. Best to leave things as they were. Occasionally he could persuade her to join him on the sofa in his office for the odd half-hour. She would take no money from him: she said she saw these sessions as fair exchange: it was not only men who had desires which must be satisfied. She was a strange one, too clever for him, but always welcome on his sofa.