by Lucy Tilney
“I usually come here on a Friday afternoon, every Friday in fact. I bring a new novel and listen to the violins in the Mount View Cafe. Today I have been buying caramels to send to my cousin in Kent, she is in poor health and I try to visit regularly, but business forces me to remain in London at the moment.”
Elizabeth wondered why he thought he needed such an elaborate explanation and assured him he was safe buying a box of sweets without accounting to her.
“It must be convenient for you to work so close to home,” he said in the tone of someone who will say anything for the sake of something to say.
“Do you call forty miles close? If it were not for Cambridge I doubt Meryton would get more than two trains a day.”
He smiled, “I am glad then you are on the way to Cambridge then, and forty miles of good track is nothing nowadays. Are you going in for a cup of tea? I would enjoy discussing the state of the railways with you in more comfortable conditions.”
His mouth twitched for a second and she almost thought he was teasing her but, no, not Mr. Darcy. He probably owned the LNER2 although reading in a tea room was a lonelier existence than the one she had imagined for him. Charles must get Friday afternoons off. Or perhaps he only did it when Charles was out of town investigating yachts.
“Well, that is an almost irresistible offer, Mr. Darcy, but I am afraid it is trumped by the hairdresser.”
He started a little and said he hoped she was not going to get it all cut off before collecting himself and looking sheepish.
“Forgive me, Miss Bennet, I… I…”
It was a pity he was a brute because he almost looked sweet holding his hat, his own wavy hair falling over his forehead, and worrying about hers.
“I am indeed getting it cut off. If I don’t put it up it reaches my waist and it takes too much of my time to look after properly.”
“Really?” He stared a moment too long. “I suppose so. Well, good day, Miss Bennet.”
And he was gone. She stood for a few moments watching his tall shape retreat down Oxford Street and instead of getting her hair cut she gave into the new electric temperature controlled tongs and got Marcel waves instead.
1 Actress, famous for her 1915 film, The Vamp.
2 London North Eastern Railway, it was the second largest railway in the UK at the time and served Cambridge and, therefore, Meryton.
GEORGE’S STORY
She could hear George singing as she pushed open the office door wondering what the girls would think of her new waves. He’d been coy about not telling her that the house he was working at over Christmas was Netherfield and she had forgiven him because he was George and for some reason people always forgave George. Now, she supposed, she had some reason to be grateful if he had helped contain the embarrassment that was Lydia at the golf club dance.
Oh, Mademoiselle from St. Nazaire,
Parlez-vous.
The Mademoiselle from St. Nazaire,
She never washed her underwear.
Parlez-vous…
“No naughty songs here, George,” cried Marianne Gardiner, “off with you before you corrupt the morals of my staff!”
He winked at Elizabeth and she could see he was in fine fettle.
“I could sing them Mary Had A Little Lamb. I know all the words…”
Marianne shook her head laughing, “Learned in the back room of a Soho public house I’ve no doubt. I hear you’re photographing the Honourable Mary King? If you could persuade her to give us an interview about becoming a professional nurse we’d be very grateful.”
George bowed with a flourish, “I promise to charm the Honourable Miss King just for you.”
“Who is Mary King?” asked Elizabeth.
“The elder daughter of Lord Edmondsbury. She managed to overcome the prejudice against VADs becoming professional nurses as well as the opposition of her family and is starting a midwifery and child health clinic in Liverpool.”
“Ah, yes, I know who you mean. Her great-grandfather was a tobacco ‘lord’ before he became a real one.”
“That’s her,” replied Mrs. Gardiner, “George, you’re still here…”
“I need a word with Miss Bennet,” he said and followed Elizabeth into her little office.
“What ails you, George?” she said as the door closed.
“I don’t want you to think I’m being forward…” the sparkling George had fizzled out, “but how long have you known Fitzwilliam Darcy?”
“Mr. Darcy? I hardly know him at all. He’s a friend of a neighbour. Why do you ask?”
George traced his finger along the top of her typewriter then sat on the edge of the desk, “You danced with him at the Bingley woman’s Christmas ball and I saw you together outside the Cornerhouse earlier. You looked… I don’t know… close.”
Elizabeth laughed, “He was on the way out when I was going in. He talked about the railways and he is the last person I want to be close to. He’s an awful snob and has separated his friend from my sister with no consideration for the feelings of either.”
“I see. Do you remember in the autumn I told you about my inheritance and the man who withheld it?”
“Of course I do! I still think you should have taken him to court.”
“Liz, the man was Fitzwilliam Darcy. Can you even begin to imagine the kind of lawyers he can command? He is phenomenally rich and no-one ever says no to him. I don’t believe he’s heard the word since his nanny retired.”
“Even on my slight acquaintance I know the truth of that but, George, why would he treat you so appallingly when you were his father’s godchild?”
George bit his lip and gazed for a moment at the back of Lily’s head on the other side of the glass, “Snobbery,” he said at last, “status... social awareness... call it what you will, is the first and last thing with Fitzwilliam. From the moment he started at Eton jostling for status with the all the little viscounts and lordlings he became aware of his position in society, what his father was, who his ancestors are and he’s as blue-blooded as any duke, believe me. He was always aware of who he would be in the world, even as a younger son, and he viciously resented his father’s affection for me. His brother, Andrew, who died at the Scarpe, often intervened but to little avail. Andrew was a great chap, his mother was American, and he had a sense of egality that Darcy will never have. Darcy went up to Cambridge in 1911 and I stayed in Derbyshire and became apprenticed to old Mr. Darcy’s estate manager intending to follow in my father’s footsteps somewhere and although we were best friends as children Fitzwilliam barely ever spoke to me again. But when your family acquired its lands from the Conqueror, and you own half of the Peaks, the biggest rubber plantation in Malaysia, a diamond mine or two, a couple of American railroads and see a future for yourself in petroleum, why would you be friends with a poor duffer in land management?”
“Oh, how horrible!” cried Elizabeth. “I have no doubt of this, George, none at all. Mr. Darcy in his high and mightiness has decreed that Charles Bingley should go away and spend months choosing him a yacht for no other reason that he suspects him attached to the sweetest, most intelligent, compassionate woman in the world whose father happens to be an eccentric academic and whose rightful inheritance is entailed away to a nonentity of a male cousin.”
“Ah,” George slipped off the desk and put his arm around her. He smelled of clean, crisp linen.
“I am sorry. Your sister is a dream and any man who can’t see that is a fool. Charles Bingley is a good egg but wholly under Darcy’s thumb and that’s how Darcy operates. It’s all or nothing. He controls you or you’re on the out and out. He hates me because he couldn’t control his father’s fondness for me. My father was a steward, my paternal grandfather a country solicitor, and my maternal grandfather a vicar so I was a nobody. Of course, he would see no value in a truly good woman whose uncle is a solicitor, whose cousin is a vicar, whose other uncle is married to a Jew.”
Elizabeth’s eyes flashed like the heroine of one of Lydi
a’s novels, “Oh! No!”
“Oh, yes. I forget you haven’t met the family.”
“Nor do I wish to, they sound foul! I am curious though about the niece.”
“I doubt Darcy is fond of her. Her mother was foreign and both the Darcys and the Fitzwilliams are xenophobic. She is a bright girl though and must come into her inheritance soon so I’ve no doubt she’ll put Pemberley behind her. Take this with a pinch of salt, of course, I knew and loved his sister, but Georgiana Darcy I know only by name.”
“Tell me more of the sister, then.”
He visibly saddened, “She died young, barely five years old, no-one really knows what happened. During the Easter hols in 1905, I came home one day and found my Auntie Mary in floods of tears because a letter had come from Italy where the family was on holiday to inform the staff at Pemberley that Annie had died there and that Lady Anne had followed her, a broken heart Auntie Mary said. Darcy was brought home by his uncle. It was all pretty grim.”
Elizabeth shook her head. How unimaginably awful, she felt a little softer towards Darcy, what a dreadful experience for a little boy.
“Was your aunt connected with the Darcy family?”
He nodded, “She was a lady’s maid to Darcy’s grandmother and often helped with Lady Anne’s wardrobe. Look, Liz, I know you’re not interested in me so I don’t have a horse in this race, but please avoid Darcy. He has no respect for those he considers beneath him and, believe me, the fact that your old man owns an estate won’t make you an equal in his eyes. He is a consummate snob and a bigot, even women of his own class are no more than breeding stock; all he’s looking for is some daughter of an earl or a marquis superior enough to birth his offspring. That’s it.”
It was draining listening to George talk about his past and the places he could no longer call his own or even visit and it made her furious. How could someone go through life exercising the power over others that Mr. Darcy obviously had without any consideration for how the others must feel? Her feelings were clear. Mr. Darcy deserved to be publicly disgraced and she said so emphatically.
George shook his head, “No, not while I remember his father and sister. I have no doubt, someone sooner or later, will reveal him for what he truly is but it will not be me. I scrape by. I have good friends and good clients, there’s nothing wrong with my life. I’d rather keep my memories untainted than open them up to legal scrutiny for however many thousands.”
Elizabeth honoured him for such feelings and thought him even more handsome than normal, and although her feelings of resentment against Mr. Darcy for his high-handed attitude still rankled, she consoled herself that, despite sleeping in his rented studio, George was the better man of the two.
When George left for his appointment with Miss King she turned her attention to the correspondence on her desk. Most of it was uninteresting but one hefty manilla envelope tied with string as precise as a ship’s rigging caught her eye. She tipped the contents out and found a neat typescript telling a compelling story of Rose Kumar, the ward of an Indian army officer and her fabulous, funny, and always thrilling exploits amongst refined upper-class Indians and pompous British civil servants. She read, she laughed, she reread, and if she had been the editor she would have offered the writer a contract to provide ‘Twenty’ with serials for ten years. No matter how much they strove to make ‘Twenty’ a cut above other magazines for young women and succeeded impressively a magazine would not sell without ‘stories’ and it was a constant chore to find stories that edified without resorting to preachiness on one hand or too much fluffy romance on the other.
Lily, although not from the class that lives in stone palaces the colour of apricot sunsets, had grown up in India so Elizabeth left the story on her desk and went to interview a woman pilot.
THE MYSTERIOUS MISS KUMAR
The next morning everyone had read the story and everyone wanted to meet Rose Kumar. Marianne’s reservations about purple prose were voted down by her enthusiastic staff so Elizabeth dashed off a note to the private Post Office box on the letter and they all held their breath.
A reply was soon received on the finest hot-pressed paper and Elizabeth arranged to meet Miss Kumar in a Mayfair tea shop. She was early but instead of thinking about the approaching interview her mind slipped back over George’s story. Was there any evidence that Darcy was a decent person? She ruminated over the evenings at Netherfield when he had talked about his mother but that was soured by the fact that it had been to annoy Caroline. Then she considered their conversation during the Christmas ball and his questions about Jane. No, there was no good to be made of Mr. Darcy. Horrible man. She ordered tea and sat back to watch the world wander by and wait.
Miss Kumar immediately recognisable. She was tall and slim with dark bobbed hair and a light brown complexion under a wide-brimmed hat adorned with silk apple blossoms. The apple blossom was echoed in the seed embroidery on a blue cashmere coat over a dress of intricate ivory cutwork. Elizabeth stood up and held out her hand. Rose smiled and Elizabeth thought she was prettier than anyone she had ever seen, even Jane.
Under normal circumstances Elizabeth would have been inclined to suspect someone claiming to be the granddaughter of a maharajah of reading too many of Lydia’s favourite novels but Rose’s clothes, the sapphires shimmering on her ears and wrists, and her exquisite handmade shoes all bespoke great wealth.
“My mother died when I was born,” she said, after the formalities and the ordering of more tea, “but my father left me with her Indian family rather than send me to England. He died at the First Battle of the Scarpe and then my English grandfather insisted I live with him and my Indian grandfather agreed that it would be better for my future. I didn’t actually travel until the end of the War so I arrived in England at the beginning of 1919. I think I cried the entire voyage.”
“Can’t you go back?” asked Elizabeth thinking that the glittering clusters in Rose’s ears would fund a first-class trip.
“I can’t go anywhere, Miss Bennet. I live with my uncle and he has my passport.”
“I do hope you are not entirely unhappy here then.”
“My uncle is very kind except on the subject of India. I have one cousin I get along with very well and another two who aren’t bad. The rest of them don’t know what to do with me. One of my great aunts is terrified her son wants to marry me and give her little brownish grandchildren which is ridiculous; the poor man is thirty-five and wears a flannel waistcoat.”
She looked firmly at Elizabeth as if she thought she might try to defend the virility of a man in a flannel waistcoat, “And as if my own family isn’t bad enough I have a step-family, a titled step-family. One of them simply peered at me through a lorgnette and said, ‘Well, my dear, there is no mistaking what you are. Your grandfather is a Brahmin, isn’t he?’ I assured her he is and if I hadn’t she would have probably dispatched me to have tea with the servants. That was my very first conversation with her if you can imagine it, and honestly, things haven’t improved since.”
Elizabeth couldn’t. She silently took back each unkind thought she had ever cherished about Aunt Florence.
Miss Kumar paused for a sip of tea and something in her elegant manner or was it her long dark lashes reminded her of someone.
“I try to avoid her but I sometimes write to her daughter who is almost worse for being the soggiest wimp in England. Oh, do forgive me, I should never have said that!”
And she looked so contrite at what was doubtless a true and accurate statement Elizabeth could not help laughing.
“I think it will be fine as far as the magazine is concerned to state that Rose Kumar grew up in India without many details, do you agree?”
“Oh, absolutely. The less the better really, I should hate my uncle to find out what I’m doing although I suppose he’s not likely to read a women’s magazine. As I’m sure you’ve worked out Rose Kumar is a nome de plume.”
Elizabeth nodded, “I am no stranger to keeping secrets from
family. I wish it were otherwise but short of being, what was it Jo March said? As prim as a… ”
“A china aster!” cried Miss Kumar and they both laughed.
“Yes, exactly. Short of living one’s life like a china aster on the mantlepiece secrets can be necessary. Perhaps you’d like to call into our offices next Thursday? We could have tea and you could read over the typescript.”
“I shall be there like billy-o,” she replied, “and meanwhile I’m going to skip along to the Strand to buy myself a secret supply of tolerably decent tea. I have smuggled a Primus stove into my room but I can’t keep asking my maid to bring up tea from the kitchen.”
Elizabeth doubted the wisdom of walking a mile in these little shoes but saying so made her feel like her mother.
On the morning of the appointment, Elizabeth found her waiting on the corner of Margaret Street and Regent Street looking woebegone.
“I’m afraid I owe you an apology, Miss Bennet,” she said after the flimsiest of excuses, “when I told you Rose Kumar was a pen-name I didn’t realise you were acquainted with my uncle. I am Georgiana Darcy and I am throwing myself on your mercy. Please do not tell him about me writing about India. I don’t mind if you don’t publish, you are under no obligation to me, but please don’t tell him.”
Mr. Darcy’s mysterious niece! A little thrill of excitement scampered up her spine.
“I am acquainted with your uncle. I saw him a few times in Hertfordshire, I have danced with him once, and bumped into him in the street once or twice. I do not feel any responsibility to tell him anything about you. May I ask how you know?”
Miss Darcy made a wry face.
“Caroline Bingley told me. It’s the day for ‘fessing up so I shall ‘fess I do not like Miss Bingley. I usually spot her before she spots me and find somewhere to hide. Indeed, I should be grateful to her for all the places I’ve seen that I never would have otherwise, like the gentlemen’s you-know-what at Kings Cross station. However I was engrossed in browsing the jewellery in Selfridge’s, you recall how they have it the entire length of the counter and it’s just so tempting, and ugh there she was. She insisted on going for tea and when cornered I encourage her to talk about herself so I asked her about Netherfield. She boasted at length and finally got around to telling me about the local society, including you.”