‘I am so glad,’ I said with a wry smile. ‘I spent a long time trying to hit the perfect expression while all the time Papa shouted at me to look this way, turn my chin down a little and pout a bit less. Never having been executed, I’m afraid that it was quite difficult for me to hit upon the correct attitude.’
Aunt Minerva gave a snort of laughter that made the jet tassels on her black silk bodice sway from side to side alarmingly. ‘You got there in the end though.’
‘We always do,’ I replied dryly before changing the subject, suddenly struck by inspiration. ‘Aunt, do you do any of your voluntary work in the Whitechapel district?’ Like many obscenely wealthy childless widows, Aunt Minerva was fond of philanthropic ventures and being of a rather managing and bossy disposition liked to take a hands on approach to her good works which led to her terrorising soup kitchens, reform schools and women’s refuges all over the metropolitan area with a particular emphasis on the indigent East End.
My aunt gave me a long quizzical look then shook her head. ‘Not at present but I know of what is apparently a very excellent women’s refuge there, on Lamb Street. Why?’
I considered telling her the truth but then decided the resultant fuss would be too hideous and so instead gave a small shrug. ‘Well, you are always talking about how I need a purpose in life…’ It was true, Aunt Minerva had very decided views on the apathetic indolence of modern young ladies and was keen that we, and in particular me, should improve ourselves with good works.
‘But why Whitechapel in particular?’ Aunt Minerva persevered with a frown between her plucked and pencilled eyebrows. ‘It is hardly the sort of environment that I thought would have piqued your interest, my dear.’
I sighed. This was going to be harder than I had anticipated. ‘It’s just that my maid said that there had been murder there this morning and I thought, well, I thought that it sounded like the sort of place that needs as much help as it can get.’ I put on my most wide eyed and innocent expression but my aunt, who had known me all my life, was not to be so easily fooled.
‘You are up to something, Alice Redmayne,’ she said a little crossly before throwing up her plump hands in an attitude of dismay. ‘Alright, I shall see what I can do but I make no promises, my dear! And I need hardly remind you that your father will no doubt be rather less than pleased by this notion of yours.’
I grinned and kissed my aunt’s cheek. ‘Thank you, dearest aunt,’ I whispered.
‘Never mind all that flummery,’ Aunt Minerva said, patting my shoulder awkwardly. ‘Besides, I see that we are about to be interrupted by one of your suitors.’
I turned abruptly to see Patrick, Lord Woollam, a friend and occasional patron of her father’s rapidly approaching us through the crowd standing around the painting. ‘Oh bother,’ I said before fixing my most pleasant smile, the one I had spent hours practising in front of my bedroom mirror, to my face.
‘He won’t be fooled by that,’ my aunt whispered, digging me in the side with her chubby elbow. ‘You can do better, Alice.’
I sighed and widened the smile until I was showing all of my teeth. ‘Better?’ I muttered.
Aunt Minerva gave a crackling laugh. ‘Much better. You look positively wolfish,’ she said before giving Patrick an arch nod of greeting and sailing off to greet some friends.
‘You can stop pretending now,’ Patrick whispered to me as he drew nearer and I gave him a look of surprised relief before letting my face relax. ‘Although I’ll admit that I would like you to greet my appearance with unaffected pleasure, I don’t think a cheshire cat grin is quite your style, my dear.’ He was a handsome young man a few years older than me who had come into his title while at school at Eton and had all the easy charming arrogance of one who was well aware of his place in the world and did not care who knew it.
I laughed then with all the unaffected delight that he could ever wish for. ‘And there I was thinking that I was favouring you with my very best smile,’ I said. ‘Clearly I need to try harder in future!’
‘Please don’t,’ he said with a pained expression that was entirely belied by the laughter in his bright blue eyes. ‘I don’t think I could bear it.’
We smiled at each other, genuinely this time, before I shook my head a little and turned my face away. ‘Has your father been extolling my virtues again?’ Patrick gently whispered.
I looked at him then. ‘Just a little,’ I admitted with a tiny shrug, accepting another glass of champagne from a passing footman. I had known Patrick since we were both horrible little children and it had been the fondest wish of both our fathers, who were the best of friends and distant cousins besides, that we should one day be married. A wish that in the absence of the young baronet’s father, my own Papa continued to champion with an often mortifying vigour.
Patrick grimaced. ‘I do wish that he wouldn’t,’ he said, sipping champagne and looking about the room where, I noted with amusement, a few of the ladies present were trying their best to catch his eye. ‘Anyone would think that I was quite incapable of wooing someone without their father’s assistance. It wouldn’t do my fearsome reputation any good at all should word get out that your father was having to egg you on to accept me.’
‘How improper you are,’ I teased, thinking that two glasses of champagne in such swift succession was surely a mistake. ‘Surely you know by now that you shouldn’t be talking of such things to me?’
He gave me a suddenly serious look that made my heart stop for a minute. ‘But I absolutely should be talking to you about such things, Miss Redmayne,’ he said simply before shrugging his slender shoulders. ‘Although perhaps such a conversation would be better suited to another time.’
I gave a watery smile. ‘Perhaps.’ I looked over his shoulder and caught the eye of my friend Lucasta Brennan who was standing a little apart with a bored expression on her pretty face as she pretended not to listen to her parents have yet another whispered argument. They’d arrived late, just after the unveiling of the painting, then proceeded to make a terrible and rather pointed fuss about the logistical difficulties of getting from Belgravia to Highbury at night, as if their house on Eaton Square was the apex of all known civilisation, while Highbury, a perfectly respectable area nowadays, was some murky backwater frequented by thieves and villains.
Patrick followed my gaze and grinned, immediately understanding my dilemma. ‘I should do the noble thing and let you go to her rescue,’ he said with a bow. ‘Your father has asked me to take you in to dinner. I do hope that is acceptable?’ he added in an undertone.
I looked up at him and smiled. ‘Of course it is,’ I murmured. ‘More than acceptable.’
He bowed again and left me, his place being quickly taken by Lucasta who kissed me soundly on both cheeks before putting her arm through mine. ‘A walk, I think,’ she declared before leading me through the double doors that led to the enormous blue and gold dining room, which was laid ready for dinner. My father loved to entertain in grand style and the long table was carefully set with thirty places each with its own little blue glass vase holding a single budding white rose.
We did not pause to admire the table though but instead carried on out through the tall French windows which led to a stone terrace overlooking the garden. Lucasta closed the windows behind us then dropped my arm and pulled a small blue enamel cigarette box from the depths of the spangled pink silk reticule that hung from her plump wrist and perfectly matched her ruffled and slightly too fussy pink taffeta and gauze gown.
‘Arguing again?’ I asked with much sympathy. Lord and Lady Brennan’s arguments had achieved legendary status in polite London society, conducted as they usually were in public and with often dramatic consequences for all concerned. No one would ever forget, for example, the time Lord Brennan, enraged beyond all reason by something his wife had hissed at him, had rushed out of a crowded ballroom and straight into the path of an omnibus. It was only the quick thinking of a group of passing young gentlemen that had saved him
from certain death or at least severe injury and the whole incident had been the talk of London for months afterwards.
Lucasta gave a shrug then lit her cigarette with a match that she casually struck on the stone balustrade. ‘Aren’t they always?’ she muttered, inhaling deeply and closing her eyes.
I watched my friend curiously. It often seemed to me that everyone was so busy gossiping about the argumentative Brennan couple that they always managed to forget that they had a daughter who was being damaged by the endless drama of her domestic life. ‘It must be hellish for you,’ I said, reaching out to take Lucasta’s hand.
Lucasta gave another shrug. ‘I’m used to it,’ she said, opening her eyes and giving me a lopsided and rather rueful smile. ‘The funny thing is that they aren’t quite so bad when they are at home. They can actually be quite affectionate with each other in fact.’
‘How peculiar,’ I said, remembering the way that my own well mannered parents had been so quietly considerate around each other. They’d been a trifle undemonstrative perhaps but I’d never, not even for one instant, had cause to think that they didn’t love each other. ‘So it’s all just an act then?’
Lucasta laughed. ‘Who knows?’ She inhaled on her cigarette again. ‘The funny thing is that I have this feeling that should anything happen to one of them, the other would be absolutely devastated. You should have seen Isabella after Richard ran out in front of that dratted omnibus.’ She examined her cigarette thoughtfully. As usual she referred to her parents by their christian names and I realised that I’d never heard her use anything else for them. ‘She was quite bereft. Even Dr Gull, and we all know what he has had to deal with from Her Majesty, had to admit that he’d never before beheld such a prolonged attack of hysterics.’
‘I will never understand adults,’ I said gravely, just as I had often done when we were children together, hanging about at the edges of some awful children’s ball in Bloomsbury or whispering to each other during the art and dancing lessons we had shared. I couldn’t remember a time when Lucasta hadn’t been a part of my life.
Lucasta grinned then. ‘We’re the adults now,’ she reminded me with a shake of her head. ‘Worse luck.’ She took one final drag on her cigarette then put it out on the side of a stone urn before slipping a tiny enamel box full of violet pastilles out of her apparently bottomless reticule. ‘Anyway, did I really see you making sheep eyes at Patrick just now?’ she asked, popping a pastille into her mouth.
‘Lamb eyes more like,’ I muttered. ‘I am being sent to slaughter, Lucasta.’
‘Heavens, you are starting to sound like Isabella,’ Lucasta said with a sidelong look of amusement at me. ‘Not long now before you’re hissing insults at Patrick over dinner and accusing him in a not so discreet whisper of giving all your friends the glad eye.’
I sighed and leaned on the balustrade, peering through the darkness into the garden. Another train was making the slow approach to Canonbury Station, the chimney emitting a long mournful whistle that was answered by a chorus of barking dogs and wailing babies from the neighbouring houses. ‘I can’t imagine being in a marriage like that,’ I said, shivering a little.
‘I don’t suppose my parents could imagine it either,’ Lucasta said sadly. ‘I don’t think anyone does. When was the last time you heard of a new bride weeping with dread and trepidation as she went up the aisle? Well, outside bad French novels anyway.’ She leaned against the balustrade beside me and inhaled deeply before coughing and choking into a lace edged handkerchief plucked from her bosom. ‘London air,’ she said with a laugh. ‘There’s nothing quite like it.’ She hunted again through her reticule and this time brought out a small battered silver tin, which she deftly opened before tipping a small white lozenge out onto her palm.
‘Mama’s cocaine tablets?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow.
She shrugged and popped it into her mouth. ‘How else do you think I’m going to get through this evening?’
I sighed then changed the subject. ‘I do like Patrick, you know,’ I said hesitantly. ‘It’s just…’
Lucasta pulled a face. ‘I know. He’s terribly handsome though, isn’t he? All those blond whiskers and those lovely melting blue eyes.’ She nudged me. ‘You could do a lot worse.’
I laughed. ‘Usually, when people say that they really mean that you can’t do any better.’
Lucasta grinned at me. ‘Well, there is that too…’
I swiped at her with my ostrich feather fan. ‘Remind me again why I am friends with you?’ I asked, still laughing.
Lucasta lunged forward and kissed my cheek. ‘That would be all down to my devilish charm and wicked sense of humour,’ she said impishly. ‘As well as the sad but true fact that no one else will put up with you. Or me either for that matter.’ We heard Swift hit the great gong in the hall that announced that dinner was about to be served. ‘Shall we?’ she said with a bow, offering her arm.
‘I think we should,’ I agreed, putting my hand on Lucasta’s arm. ‘Remember that you have to deliver me to Patrick though. He’s been given strict instructions from Papa.’
‘Lucky you. I’ve been lumbered with someone old enough to have squired my great grandmother when she was a girl.’ Lucasta sniggered and I noted that the cocaine was already taking effect as she had a decided flush about her cheeks and a brightness in her eyes that I didn’t quite like. ‘By the way, what’s this I’ve heard about you going to Whitechapel?’ she asked suddenly as she pulled the French windows open and stepped into the dining room. The maids had been busy while we were out on the terrace and all the candles in the silver candelabras in the centre of the table had been lit, casting a soft amber glow over the room and making the precious blue and gold Chinese wallpaper shimmer.
My heart stopped. ‘What about it?’ I asked a little breathlessly.
Lucasta turned to look at me in surprise. ‘Oh nothing much. I just thought that I heard your Aunt Minerva haranguing your poor Papa about letting you do some work in a refuge there.’ She hurried me past the dining table. ‘Oh, do get a move on, Alice or we’ll miss the procession into dinner. I’ll never hear the end of it if I make you late for poor old Patrick.’
Chapter Six
A few weeks later, I was sitting in my aunt’s coach and making the journey from Highbury to Whitechapel, clutching my blue silk reticule nervously on my lap as we trotted down Grosvenor Road then turned to go across the stone bridge that passed over the railway line. A train had just gone through and the air was still heavy with dense black smoke, which made Aunt Minerva, who was sitting opposite, click her tongue against her teeth with irritation and angrily yank the window blind down.
‘I really don’t know how you can bear it,’ she huffed to me, as I watched her with some amusement. ‘It’s so incredibly vulgar to live next to a railway line. Why on earth can’t your father move to Chelsea or even Bloomsbury like all the other artists I know? Heavens, he ought to be able to afford a house in Mayfair by now!’
I sighed, only too familiar with this well worn refrain as I’d been listening to variations on the same theme ever since childhood. ‘He likes Highbury,’ I said with a shrug. ‘And he loves the railway line. He likes to hear the trains go past while he’s working in his studio - he says that it keeps him sane and makes him feel modern and connected to the world even when he is painting scenes from history.’
Aunt Minerva sniffed and twitched her grey cashmere shawl into place about her shoulders. ‘That’s all very well for him but what about you, my dear?’ She put the blind up again and peered out disconsolately at our surroundings as the carriage bowled down St Paul’s Road, a wide thoroughfare lined with pleasant terraced houses and prosperous and well looked after little shops. There had been torrential rain the previous night, one of those sudden summer storms that seemed to come out of nowhere, turning the sky black seemingly in seconds. This morning had dawned bright and clear however and so the streets were full of people: young couples strolling arm in arm and gazing sou
lfully at each other and parents out with their children, who laughed as they skipped and jumped along the sun warmed pavement where only a few puddles remained as testament to yesterday’s deluge. Everyone was smiling and cheerful and clearly looking forward to the day to come but Aunt Minerva remained entirely unmoved. ‘This was a village until not so long ago and it’s still practically rustic out here. Don’t you feel cut off from your friends?’
I shook my head, a tiny smile touching my lips as I remembered Lucasta’s parents squabbling about the distance between Belgravia and Highbury on the night of my father’s unveiling. ‘Not at all,’ I said with absolute sincerity. ‘I like to be with Papa and have no great desire to be anywhere else.’
My aunt fixed me with a penetrating look from her huge blue eyes, the only and rather disconcerting resemblance she bore to my softly spoken and rather fragile looking mother, who had been her younger sister. ‘Well, that won’t always be the case, I am sure. We shall have to put our heads together and find you a house in town once you are married,’ she paused to give a knowing little smile, ‘unless, of course, your husband already has a decent property of his own.’ Needless to say, as well as Honywood Hall, his estate in Essex, Patrick also owned an enormous and very elegantly furnished town house on Cavendish Square, a castle in Scotland and several thousand acres in Derbyshire.
From Whitechapel Page 6