Julian Fellowes's Belgravia

by Julian Fellowes

  “You. Magician. Can you come with us?”

  James jumped to his feet, abandoning his supper on the instant. Both of the other men were tall, and he seemed to be like a little plump joker between two kings—which was what he was, really, as Anne was obliged to acknowledge.

  The man opposite her at the table could not hide his admiration. “Your husband is obviously in the Duke’s confidence, madam.”

  “So it would appear.” But she did feel rather proud of him for once, which was a nice sensation.

  When they opened the door of the dressing room, a startled valet, disturbed in the act of laying out a nightshirt, looked up to find himself staring into the face of the Supreme Commander. “May we have the room for a moment?” said Wellington, and the valet almost gasped as he made good his escape. “Have you got a decent map of the area?”

  Richmond muttered that he had and, pulling a large volume from the shelves, opened it to show Brussels and the surrounding countryside. Wellington was starting to reveal the rage he had concealed so successfully in the supper room earlier. “Napoléon has humbugged me, by God. Orange has had a second message, this one from Baron Rebecque. Bonaparte’s pushed up the Charleroi to Brussels Road, and he’s getting nearer.” He leaned over the page. “I’ve given orders for the army to concentrate at Quatre Bras, but we shall not stop him there.”

  “You may. You have some hours before daylight.” Richmond did not believe his own words any more than the great Duke.

  “If I do not, I shall have to fight him here.”

  James craned over the map. The Duke’s thumbnail rested at a small village named Waterloo. It seemed oddly unreal that one minute after quietly eating his supper in a nondescript corner he was in the Duke of Richmond’s dressing room, alone with him and the Commander-in-Chief at the center of events that would change all their lives.

  And then Wellington acknowledged him for the first time since they had arrived. “I shall need your help, Magician. You understand? We will be first at Quatre Bras, and then, almost certainly, at…” He paused to check the name on the map. “Waterloo. Rather a strange name to qualify for immortality.”

  “If anyone can make it immortal, you can, Your Grace.” In James’s comparatively simple set of values, a little toadying seldom went amiss.

  “But do you have enough information?” Wellington was a professional soldier, not a bungling amateur, and James admired him for it.

  “I do. Don’t worry. We will not fail for lack of supplies.”

  Wellington looked at him. He almost smiled. “You’re a bright man, Trenchard. You must use your talents well when the wars are done. I believe you have the potential to go far.”

  “Your Grace is very kind.”

  “But you mustn’t be distracted by the gewgaws of Society. You’re cleverer than that, or should be, and worth much more than most of those peacocks in the ballroom. Don’t forget it.” He seemed almost to hear a voice telling him the hour had come. “Enough. We must get ready.”

  When they emerged, the company was already in turmoil, and it was at once clear that the word had spread. The flower-filled rooms that had been so fragrant and elegant when the evening began were filled with scenes of heartrending good-byes. Mothers and young girls were weeping openly, clinging to their sons and brothers, their husbands and their sweethearts, and abandoning all pretence of calm. To James’s amazement, the band was still playing and, even more astonishingly, some couples continued to dance, although how they could, surrounded by consternation and grief, was hard to understand.

  Anne came to him before he had found her in the throng. “We should leave,” he said. “I must go straight to the depot. I’ll put you and Sophia into the carriage and then I’ll walk.”

  She nodded. “Is it the final struggle?”

  “Who knows? I think so. We’ve promised ourselves every skirmish was the last battle for so many years now, but this time I really believe it is. Where’s Sophia?”

  They found her in the hall, weeping in the arms of Lord Bellasis. Anne thanked the chaos and rout that surrounded them for concealing their folly and indiscretion. Bellasis whispered in Sophia’s ear and then handed her over to her mother. “Take care of her.”

  “I usually do,” said Anne, a little irritated by his presumption. But his own sorrow at parting protected him from her tone. With a last glance at the object of his affections, he hurried out with a group of fellow officers. James had retrieved the shawls and wraps, and now they found themselves caught in the crowd, pushing for the door. The Duchess was nowhere to be seen. Anne gave up searching and resolved to write to her in the morning, although she gave the Duchess credit by assuming she would not be much concerned by the social niceties at such a moment.

  At last they were in the outer hall, through the open door, and then outside in the street. There was a crush here, too, but less so than in the house. Some officers were already mounted. Anne spied Bellasis in the melee. His servant had brought his horse and held it as his master mounted. Anne watched as, for a second, Bellasis seemed to scan the multitude searching for someone, but if it was Sophia she did not catch his attention. It was exactly at this moment that Anne heard a gasp behind her. Her daughter was staring at the group of soldiers below them. “What is it?” Anne did not recognize any of the men. But Sophia could only shake her head, though whether in sorrow or horror was difficult to determine. “You knew he must go.” Anne slipped an arm around her daughter’s shoulders.

  “It’s not that.” Sophia could only fix her gaze on one group of the uniformed men. They started to move off. She shuddered and let out a sob that seemed to be torn from the roots of her soul.

  “My dear, you must control yourself.” Anne looked around, trying to make sure there were no witnesses to this moment. Her daughter was beyond control or command. She was shaking now, like someone with an ague, trembling and sweating, tears pouring down her cheeks. Anne took charge. “Come with me. Quickly. We must get back before you’re recognized.”

  Together, she and her husband dragged the shivering girl down the line of waiting coaches until they found their own and pushed her into it. James hurried away, but it was an hour before the vehicle escaped from the pack of carriages and Anne and Sophia were able to make their way home.

  Sophia did not leave her room the following day, but it made no matter as the whole of Brussels was on tenterhooks and nobody noticed her absence. Would the invasion sweep through the town? Was every young woman in danger? The citizens were torn. Should they hope for victory and bury their valuables to save them from the returning troops, or would it be defeat and must they run? Anne spent most of the day in contemplation and prayer. James had not come home. His man went down to the depot taking a change of clothes and a basket of food, although she almost smiled at her folly in sending supplies to the chief supplier.

  Then news of the engagement at Quatre Bras started to filter through. The Duke of Brunswick was dead, shot through the heart. Anne thought of the dark, raffishly handsome man she’d seen waltzing with the Duchess only the night before. There would be more such news before it was over. She looked around the drawing room of their rented villa. It was nice enough: a little grand for her taste, not grand enough for James’s, with dark furniture and white curtains of silk moiré finished off with heavily draped and fringed pelmets above. She picked up her embroidery and put it down again. How could she sew when, within a few miles, men she knew were fighting for their lives? She did the same with a book. But she couldn’t even pretend to concentrate on a fictional story when so savage a tale was being played out near enough for them to hear the cannons boom. Her son, Oliver, came in and threw himself into a chair. “Why aren’t you at school?”

  “They’ve sent us home.” She nodded. Of course they had. The teachers must be making their own plans for escape. “Any news from my father?”

  “No, but he is not in any danger.”

  “Why is Sophia in bed?”

  “She’s not fe
eling well.”

  “Is it about Lord Bellasis?”

  Anne looked at him. How do the young know these things? He was sixteen. He’d never been in anything that could remotely be called Society. “Of course not,” she said. But the boy only smiled.

  It was Tuesday morning before Anne saw her husband again. She was breakfasting in her room, though up and dressed, when he opened her door, looking as if he had been through the mud and dust of a battlefield himself. Her greeting was simple enough. “Thank God,” she said.

  “We’ve done it. Boney’s on the run. But not everyone is safe.”

  “So I imagine, poor souls.”

  “The Duke of Brunswick is dead.”

  “I heard.”

  “Lord Hay, Sir William Ponsonby—”

  “Oh.” She thought of the gently smiling man who had teased her about her husband’s firmness. “How sad. I hear that some of them died still in the dress uniforms they’d worn for the ball.”

  “That’s true.”

  “We should pray for them. I feel our presence there that night gives us some sort of connection to them all, poor fellows.”

  “Indeed. But there is another casualty you will not have to imagine a link with.” She looked at him expectantly. “Viscount Bellasis has been killed.”

  “Oh no.” Her hand flew to her face. “Are they sure?” Her stomach lurched. Why, exactly? It was hard to say. Did she think there was a chance that Sophia had been right, and now the girl’s great chance was lost? No. She knew that for a fantasy, but still… How terrible.

  “I went there yesterday. Out to the battlefield. And a very awful sight it was, too.”

  “Why did you go?”

  “Business. Why do I ever do anything?” He regretted his caustic tone of voice. “I heard Bellasis was on the list of fatalities, and I asked to see his body. It was him, so yes, I’m sure. How is Sophia?”

  “A shadow of herself since the ball, no doubt dreading the very news that we must now take to her.” Anne sighed. “I suppose she should be told before she hears it from someone else.”

  “I’ll tell her.” She was surprised. This was not the sort of duty James volunteered for as a rule.

  “I think it must be me. I am her mother.”

  “No. I’ll tell her. You can go to her afterward. Where is she?”

  “In the garden.”

  He strode out as Anne pondered their exchange. So this was where Sophia’s folly would end: not in scandal, thankfully, but in sorrow. The girl had dreamed her dreams, and James had encouraged her to do so, but now they must turn to dust. They’d never know if Sophia was right and Bellasis had honorable plans or if she, Anne, was nearer the mark and Sophia was only ever a charming doll to be played with while they were stationed in Brussels. She moved over to sit in the window seat. The garden below was laid out in the formal manner that was still admired in the Netherlands, even though it had been abandoned by the English. Beside a graveled path, Sophia sat on a bench, a book unopened at her side, when her father came out of the house. James talked as he drew near and sat next to his daughter, taking her hand. Anne wondered how he’d choose the words. It looked as if he would not be hurried, and he spoke for a while, quite gently, before Sophia suddenly flinched as if she had been struck. At that, James took her into his arms and she started to sob. Anne could at least be glad that her husband had been as kind as he knew how to be when he told the dreadful tidings.

  Later, Anne would ask herself how she could have been so sure this was the end of Sophia’s story. But then, as she told herself, who would learn better than she that hindsight is a prism that alters everything? She stood. It was time for her to go down and comfort her daughter, who had woken from a beautiful reverie into a cruel world.

  1841. The carriage came to a halt. It hardly seemed a moment since she had climbed into it. But then the journey from Eaton Place to Belgrave Square was not worth taking out a carriage for and, if she’d had her way, she would have walked. Of course, in such matters she did not have her way. Ever. A moment later the postilion was down and the door had been opened. He held out his arm for her to steady herself as she negotiated the carriage steps. Anne took a breath to calm her nerves and stood. The house awaiting her was one of the splendid classical “wedding-cake” variety that had been going up for the previous twenty years in the recently christened Belgravia, but it contained few secrets for Anne Trenchard. Her husband had spent the previous quarter of a century building these private palaces, in squares and avenues and crescents, housing the rich of nineteenth-century England, working with the Cubitt brothers and making his own fortune into the bargain.

  Two women were admitted into the house ahead of her, and the footman stood waiting expectantly, holding the door open. There was nothing for it but to walk up the steps and into the cavernous hall where a maid was in attendance to take her shawl, but Anne kept her bonnet firmly in place. She had grown used to being entertained by people she scarcely knew, and today was no exception. Her hostess’s father-in-law, the late Duke of Bedford, had been a client of the Cubitts, and her husband, James, had done a lot of work on Russell Square and Tavistock Square for him. Of course, these days, James liked to present himself as a gentleman who just happened to be in the Cubitt offices by chance, and sometimes it worked. He had successfully made friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, of the Duke and his son, Lord Tavistock. As it happened, his wife, Lady Tavistock, had always been a superior figure in the background, leading another life as one of the young Queen’s ladies of the bedchamber, and she and Anne had hardly spoken more than a few civil words over the years, but it was enough, in James’s mind, to build on. In time the old Duke had died, and when the new Duke wanted James’s help to develop the Russells’ London holdings still further, James had dropped the hint that Anne would like to experience the Duchess’s much talked-about innovation of “afternoon tea,” and an invitation had been forthcoming.

  It was not exactly that Anne Trenchard disapproved of her husband’s social mountaineering. At any rate, she’d grown used to it. She saw the pleasure it brought him—or rather, the pleasure he thought it brought him—and she did not begrudge him his dreams. She simply did not share them, any more now than she had in Brussels almost thirty years before. She knew well enough that the women who welcomed her into their houses did so under orders from their husbands, and that these orders were given in case James could be useful. Having issued the precious cards, to balls and luncheons and dinners and now the new “tea,” they would use his gratitude for their own ends until it became clear to Anne, if not to James, that they were governing him by means of his snobbery. Her husband had placed a bit in his own mouth and put the reins into the hands of men who cared nothing for him and only for the profits he could guide them to. In all this, Anne’s job was to change her clothes four or five times a day, sit in large drawing rooms with unwelcoming women, and come home again. She had grown used to this way of life. She was no longer unnerved by the footmen or the splendor that seemed to be increasingly lavish with every year that passed, but nor was she impressed by it. She saw this life for what it was: a different way of doing things. With a sigh she climbed the great staircase with its gilded handrail beneath a full-length Thomas Lawrence portrait of her hostess in the fashions of the Regency. Anne wondered if the picture was a copy, made to impress their London callers while the original sat happily ensconced at Woburn.

  She reached the landing and made her way into another predictably large drawing room, this one lined in pale blue damask, with a high painted ceiling and gilded doors. A great many women sat about on chairs and sofas and ottomans, balancing plates and cups and frequently losing control of both. A smattering of gentlemen, point-device in their outfits and obviously creatures of leisure, sat gossiping among the ladies. One looked up at her entrance in recognition, but Anne saw an empty chair at the edge of the gathering and made for it, passing an old lady who started to lunge for a sandwich plate that was sliding away fr
om her and down her voluminous skirts when Anne caught it. The stranger beamed. “Well saved.” She took a bite. “It is not that I dislike a light nuncheon of cakes and tea to carry one through to dinner, but why can’t we sit at a table?”

  Anne had reached her chair and, given her neighbor’s relatively friendly opening, considered herself entitled to sit upon it. “I think the point is that one isn’t trapped. We can all move about and talk to whom we like.”

  “Well, I like to talk to you.”

  Their rather anxious hostess hurried over. “Mrs. Trenchard, how kind of you to look in.” It did not sound as if Anne was expected to stay very long, but this was not bad news as far as Anne was concerned.

  “I’m delighted to be here.”

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” This came from the old lady Anne had rescued, but the Duchess showed a marked reluctance to carry out her duties. Then, with a crisp smile, she realized she had to.

  “May I present Mrs. James Trenchard.” Anne nodded and waited. “The Dowager Duchess of Richmond.” She said the name with tremendous finality, as if that must bring all reasonable conjecture on the subject to an end. There was a silence. She looked to Anne for a suitably overawed response, but the name had given her guest something of a shock, if a pang of nostalgia and sadness can be called a shock. Before Anne could make any observation that might rescue the moment, their hostess was gushing on. “Now you must let me introduce you to Mrs. Carver and Mrs. Shute.” Clearly she had corralled a section of more obscure ladies whom she intended to keep out of the hair of the great and the good. But the old lady was not having it.

  “Don’t snatch her away yet. I know Mrs. Trenchard.” The old lady screwed up her features in concentration as she studied the face opposite.

  Anne nodded. “You have a wonderful memory, Duchess, since I would have thought I was changed past all recognition, but you’re right. We have met. I attended your ball. In Brussels, before Waterloo.”