‘How do you do,’ she said formally, and let his hand drop.
He wasn’t to be put off. ‘I want to show you General.’
He went back to the door quickly, and emerged again pulling on the collar of a large black dog. The dog came with just enough reluctance to assert himself; he went to Jane with almost as much curiosity as William displayed.
‘I’ve had General for two years. Mamma gave him to me on my birthday, and so General and I always have our birthdays together.’
Jane ran her hand over the curling black coat. ‘He’s very handsome,’ she said lamely. She couldn’t find anything else to say, and yet it seemed to be expected, because Anne and O’Neill were staring at her, and waiting on her words as much as William was. She felt herself flush, and there were tears of annoyance and frustration pricking the back of her eyes. She had been doing so well ‒ almost feeling that she belonged with Anne and her titled lover, sipping chocolate daintily and feeling at home in a silk gown. But William was obviously so much more at home here; by comparison she must seem once again the country girl, full of clumsiness and unease.
Even the dog gave William an added advantage ‒ standing beside him William looked like a portrait child, straight and elegant, his hand resting possessively on the collar. She wanted to shake him; he was bred in the fashion of all the spoiled and favoured children of the rich who had come to The Feathers ‒ the ones who had given orders, and expected service from her as their due. And yet he was her half-brother; he had Anne’s love, and so much besides.
O’Neill spoke at last. The pause had become too lengthy, and he was detached enough from the three to be able to sense Jane’s feelings. There had been an instant sympathy in him for this girl with the bruised eye and marked breast who had, before his fascinated gaze, this morning slipped into a new world.
‘Aren’t they alike now, William ‒ did you ever see two so alike?’
William considered for a moment, giving Jane a careful and unselfconscious scrutiny ‒ just as if she were a stuffed dummy Jane thought angrily, with no eyes and ears.
‘Well ‒ I don’t know … Patrick said that too. He said Jane was as pretty as Mamma, but I don’t know. I don’t think she’s quite as pretty.’
‘Indeed now ‒ the pair of them would turn heads wherever they went. Indeed they would!’ Suddenly O’Neill’s face broke into a broad smile; he smacked his thigh appreciatively. ‘I’ve got it, Anne ‒ by God, that would set the town talking!’
Anne looked at him quickly. ‘What are you talking about, Ted?’
‘Why don’t we take Jane to the reception this evening … you know, dress her up in one of your gowns, and let people think they were seeing your double. What a joke that’d be … why, it’d be around the town in no time.’
Anne’s face was troubled as she turned towards Jane.
‘Jane … I …’
Jane knew suddenly that this was one time when she had to speak entirely from her own instinct ‒ she must make a decision and override O’Neill without fully understanding why she did it. To go to a fashionable party wearing one of Anne’s lovely gowns had been part of the dream she’d carried. Now the chance had come, and it was hers only to say yes, and there would be the gown and the slippers, the headdress and the carriage. And yet she knew she wasn’t going to accept. There was no reason she could put into words even now why she should refuse, but she did.
Anne’s gaze was fixed on her anxiously as she spoke to O’Neill.
‘Oh, come, Lord O’Neill! ‒ would you have me at a party with an eye like the black end of a pot! Why, I’d no more look like my mother, than I’d look like the queen! The truth is, sir, my bones ache sorely from the hard ground last night, and I’m in need of a little rest.’
She glanced across to Anne again ‒ Anne who now cuddled William loosely in her arms as he leaned against her chair. In her eyes Jane read deep relief and satisfaction ‒ and yet it was more than that, it was pleasure in her daughter, and commendation for a decision wisely made. She said nothing, but she nodded faintly, almost imperceptibly.
To Jane it was like a door being opened. William mattered now much less than he had two minutes before.
Three
The gowns lay piled on the floor before Jane. She touched them with reverent and excited hands ‒ the silk and velvet had the feel of enchantment beneath her fingers, and the colours spilled over the rose carpet in a mad and rich confusion. There were mostly greens ‒ Anne looked best in green ‒ with a blue and a cream and a white among them. There was a cloak with the trimming of fur, and a wide-brimmed hat. Anne had tossed them out of her wardrobe and bundled them carelessly together.
‘They all need a stitch somewhere ‒ and I’m useless with a needle. You’re a trifle taller, I fancy, but there are hems …’ She examined the hems a little doubtfully, noticing the mud splashes from the London streets; then she tossed them aside with a shrug. ‘Well … do the best you can with them. I’m sorry there’s no money at the moment to buy you new ones. Perhaps later … perhaps when my luck stops being so parsimonious!’
She had said this on her way out to an afternoon drive in the Park with O’Neill. She had worn a fur wrap, and the brim of her hat dipped provocatively over one eye ‒ but it was still possible to see that her eyes looked tired, and that when O’Neill or William weren’t present, there was no zest in her voice. The soft perfume she wore lingered behind in the ante-room; Jane could smell it in the gowns piled on the floor.
One by one she tried them ‒ startled to see, suddenly, how closely she resembled Anne. They were gowns meant to attract and hold attention; the low-cut necks, that revealed her breasts, were very deliberate. She would have to lace tighter to stay with the waists. They were the kind of clothes a woman like Anne would always wear.
The few hours she had been in Anne’s household she had used to listen and observe, and as she tried to settle her jumbled impressions. From the unending contact with people at The Feathers she had learned enough to be able to sum up the situation here without much difficulty. Jane knew the feeling and atmosphere of a household deeply in debt ‒ but here they lived only as the rich did. Here was recklessness and extravagance at its height. Anne needed money badly, and yet she lived at a rate that would have frightened most people, forever trusting that luck would bring the cards right, and that she would ride home with money in her pocket.
In a strange way Patrick was behind most of the facade of splendour. He sped about, his long body poking at awkward and ungainly angles, getting through the work of five servants. He ran the household, and even doubled as coachman; he supervised William through most of the day and made it unnecessary to employ a tutor for more than a few hours. Jane wondered, had Patrick been any kind of a scholar, if Anne wouldn’t have pressed him even to that extra duty. The man had a nervous, agitated thinness, and his eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep; yet he never halted in his tasks, or seemed to notice the appalling burden of his work. He was devoted to Anne, worshipping her with his eyes and tongue, treating her with a mixture of grave paternalism, and the reverence he would have given to a queen.
Jane fingered the rich stuff of the gowns, and decided that possibly one of them would have paid for her keep at The Feathers for a whole year. But in Anne’s life, new gowns were vastly important, and Hampstead was a long way off, and easily put out of mind. Here, where servants were clamouring for wages, and the butcher to have his bills settled, it would be easier to pay those on hand than worry about a daughter who never showed herself, and never asked for money. Jane tacked an edging of lace in position, and thought, with a wry smile, that her mistake had been in not coming to Anne much sooner. Anne would always take care of whatever problems forced themselves on her; the rest could wait or be forgotten. As long as she had been prepared to fend for herself at The Feathers, Anne had been prepared to let her do it. Now she was here, and Anne would bestir herself, and be as energetic on her behalf as she was for most others.
It didn’t occur to her to feel angry over Anne’s treatment; that was the way Anne lived, and nothing would ever alter her.
In a way, Jane thought, it explained why William had remained here, instead of being sent off to be nursed as she had been. Anne had been passionately in love with William’s father, and his child was loved for his sake. By the time William was of an age to be troublesome to Anne, he had been a fixture in her household, and there would have been no thought of sending him away. Besides that, Anne with the years slipping by her, had the need of love ‒ and whatever men came or went, William was always with her, a perpetual reminder of the man she had loved unchangingly.
O’Neill’s position, she felt, was impermanent, he would go when either he or Anne tired of the other. Jane guessed that he had no money ‒ apart from Anne’s complaints of the lack of it, O’Neill didn’t have the air of a man who was contributing substantially to her support. There was no possessiveness about him. Rather, they appeared as two people who had come to an amicable arrangement which could be broken at any moment whenever they desired. They were together because they needed company and amusement ‒ possibly, Jane thought, because there was no one better in sight for either of them. They were affectionate to each other, but only the lightest kind of loyalty was involved. O’Neill kept rooms in a tavern in Crab Tree Yard, Anne had told her; so when the parting came there would be no sense of breaking up Anne’s household or her routine of life. They would part affectionately, but with a shrug of the shoulders.
Without Anne’s presence about which to pivot, the house seemed strangely quiet. Jane listened to the silence; she could no longer hear Patrick’s brogue shouting orders at the cook, or hear the sounds of his feverish activity, the doors closing noisily, the dishes clattering in the basement. There was peace here at last ‒ the rooms were dusted, the fires laid ‒ upstairs William worked with his tutor. The absence of noise was unfamiliar; Jane had always lived in the midst of haste and bustle, and now, with tasks waiting to be done, as she knew there were, it was difficult to grow accustomed to the idea that she would not be asked, or expected, to help with them. She decided that she liked the silence and peace of this house; she liked sitting here with nothing more arduous to do than sewing a few ruffles, and lengthening some hems. She still wore Anne’s silk robe, and felt comfortable in it; the memory of the lice-ridden clothes that Patrick had taken down to burn she put aside hastily. For the moment there seemed nothing out of joint ‒ except the sight of her work-roughened hands against the rich material.
The door opened very quietly; it was only the sensation she had that someone was staring at her which made her turn. William stood half-shy in the door, a hopeful, expectant smile on his face.
‘Would I disturb you if I came in? Patrick said I must ask first.’
She was tongue-tied and uneasy in William’s presence, and she certainly didn’t want him; but there was no way of indicating that without also letting him know her feelings. She had no alternative but to motion him in. The black dog was with him ‒ his head thrust round the door just as William’s was. They came in together, and William drew up a footstool close to her. He seated himself where he could watch what she was doing. The dog squatted beside him.
Jane glanced at him quickly, before bending over her work again. He seemed different from this morning ‒ to start with his face was streaked with jam, and his hair was wild-looking. He had changed his jacket for an older one. He was still as self-possessed as before, but now he almost resembled the young children who had played in the village street at Hampstead. She felt herself warm a little to him.
‘I thought you were having lessons,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh ‒ they’re finished,’ he said happily. ‘Mr. Taylor goes to give lessons in mathematics to the daughters of Sir Sidney Stone at this time.’
‘Math … mathematics? To girls?’
‘Yes ‒ it’s funny, isn’t it. But Sir Sidney is a sailor, and Mr. Taylor says he makes the girls learn about mathematics and astronomy just as if they’d been boys, and were going to sea.’
‘How strange.’ Jane said, wonderingly. Her own aptitude with a column of figures was extremely sound, but she had once looked in Simon Garfield’s book of Euclid, and the strange drawings and lines had seemed completely useless and bewildering. She began to wonder how much William knew of the subject; she hoped it wasn’t much.
‘What lessons do you take ‒ can you read and write?’
‘Oh, yes!’ he said quickly, as if it were an accomplishment to be taken for granted. ‘And I have lessons in geography and history and mathematics.’
‘Oh ‒ do you?’ She was vaguely envious of his knowledge even though at his age it couldn’t be very great. ‘Is Mr. Taylor old?’ She had memories of Simon Garfield, crabby and impatient in his old age.
‘Oh, no ‒ he’s young. He’s only been down from Oxford for a year, and he’s waiting now to go off on a botanical expedition to the South Seas. He likes to talk more than teach.’
‘To talk? ‒ to you? What does he talk about?’
‘Oh ‒ all kinds of things. He talks about plants and birds. And he talks about the Revolution in France. He’s afraid if war breaks out they won’t fit up a ship for the South Seas.’
She nodded as he spoke. There had been so much talk at The Feathers of the Revolution and the chances of war; she had listened to the heated discussions, and always agreed with the speaker of the moment. She had never understood the aims of the Revolution, or what the people of France expected to gain by it. Now she felt ashamed of her ignorance. It was to be expected that London would buzz with news of it. This was the city where people made and lost money in wars and revolution. Among the poor folk and the country people it was a matter of going away to fight in wars they didn’t make, and didn’t understand ‒ and in which, perhaps, they would die. She nodded again at William. In the future she would have to listen, and remember.
‘Does ‒ does he expect there’ll be war?’
William nodded emphatically. ‘He says they’re bound to find an excuse to execute the King sooner or later, and England will surely come into the war. Parliament talks about it all the time ‒ and a Jacobin doesn’t hardly dare to open his mouth in this country.’
‘What else does he say!’
‘That the brothers of the King of France are causing trouble wherever they can ‒ saying that everyone ought to go to war with France. Mr. Taylor says that they don’t care what becomes of the Royal Family. With the King and the Dauphin dead all of them would be nearer to the crown themselves.’
‘Can’t they leave France? I’ve heard that a great many of French people have.’ It was all she knew about the present crisis, and she repeated it rather desperately.
William’s eyes opened wide. ‘Don’t you know? ‒ the King and Queen Marie Antionette and their children are shut up in a Palace in Paris. They tried to escape and were sent back.’
Jane applied herself to her work again. William was only repeating parrot-fashion what he had heard, but still he made a better showing of knowledge than she could. But somehow she didn’t dislike him for being better informed than she; it was simpler to accept the fact that William was a town child, brought up in the society of adults. If he repeated what he heard it was useless to resent it.
He watched her in silence for a time, his hands clasped over his knees as he squatted on the low stool. Occasionally he put out his hand to pat the dog, to pull gently at the long black curling ears. Then, rather shyly, he touched the silk of the dress.
‘This is my mother’s gown,’ he said. ‘Are you going to wear it now?’
She nodded. ‘Yes ‒ I’ll wear it.’
‘You’ll look pretty in it,’ he said matter-of-factly. Then his eyebrows shot up, as if he had just remembered something of importance. ‘This morning …’ he began quickly, ‘… you remember this morning when I said you were not as pretty as Mamma?’
She took her eyes away from the green silk. His exp
ression was serious. ‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Well ‒ I didn’t mean it. I think you’re just as pretty. But I had to say that because Mamma worries over how she looks. I see her staring in the looking-glass, and it seems to make her sad. But I knew that you knew you were pretty, so it wouldn’t matter my saying that for once.’
Jane nodded. She didn’t know what to answer; if William had already begun to notice Anne’s concern over her looks, then he was not going to be fooled by any denial she would make. She began to feel vaguely sorry for William; to her way of thinking it was an unnatural life for a child. He was cut off from the companionship she had known in Hampstead, the sharing in the village activities ‒ but here in London, Anne’s way of living would automatically cut him off from the society of the children of conventional families. Probably he knew this well enough; he was a lonely child who played with his dog ‒ who talked to Patrick of household matters and the gossip of the street, and to his tutor of wars and revolution. And he came in daily to greet Anne at breakfast with her lover. Suddenly she knew the richness of what she had shared with Pru and Lottie and Mary in the kitchen of The Feathers, things she had had which William would never know. He had Anne’s love and attention, but it had created a prison for him. The picture of the envied child in the velvet coat faded for Jane, and it was never to return again.
Then she also put out her hand and stroked the dog’s head, and played with his ears as William was doing; the child glowed with pleasure.
‘He’s nice, isn’t he? Feel how soft it is here ‒ look, just in this underneath part of his ears.’
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