Julian Fellowes's Belgravia

by Julian Fellowes

  “What’s that you’re drinking?” Peregrine stared at his nephew.

  “Brandy, sir.” John was quite unapologetic.

  “Were you cold?”

  “Not particularly.”

  Peregrine laughed. He did not like John much, but he preferred him to his father. At least he had nerve. He looked back at Stephen with ill-concealed distaste. “Why were you here so early?”

  “How are you these days?” replied the Reverend from his armchair, ignoring the question. He had one knee crossed over the other and was swinging his right foot. “The damp weather not affecting you?”

  His brother shook his head. “It seems warm to me.”

  “Everything all right at Lower Farm?”

  “Checking up on your future concern?” asked Peregrine.

  “Not at all,” said Stephen. “Is it a crime to be interested?”

  “It’s nice to see you, my dear,” lied Caroline, sitting down near Grace. She found the endless fencing of the siblings tiresome and pointless.

  “That’s good of you.” Grace was a woman whose cup was always half empty. “I was wondering if you have anything you could give me for the church fete. I’m looking for embroidery, handkerchiefs, little cushions, that sort of thing.” She drew her fingertips together to make a steeple. “I’m afraid the need is very great.” She paused. “We have so many requests for help. The old, the crippled, young widows with children and no one left to earn. It’s enough to break your heart.”

  Caroline nodded. “What about fallen women?”

  Grace looked blank. “Fallen women?”

  “Mothers who never had a husband.”

  “Oh, I see.” Grace frowned as if Caroline had committed some kind of solecism. “We usually prefer to leave them to the Parish.”

  “Do they apply to you for help?”

  “Sometimes.” The subject was making Grace uncomfortable. “But we try to resist sentimentality. How else are other girls to learn, if not from the sad example of the fallen ones?” She returned to safer shores and started to elaborate on her plans for the bazaar.

  As the Countess listened to Grace discussing proposals for games and tents and coconut shies, she could not help but think about Sophia Trenchard, pregnant at eighteen. If she had stood, wringing her hands and weeping, in front of that stony-faced committee, would Grace have turned her down, too? Probably. And would she herself have been more merciful, if Sophia had come to the family for help? “I’ll find some things that might be useful,” she replied eventually.

  “Thank you,” said Grace. “The committee will be so grateful.”

  Luncheon was served in the dining room with four footmen and Jenkins in attendance. It was a far cry from the huge shooting and hunting parties of the old days. They had hardly entertained since Edmund’s death. But even when there was no one but family present, Peregrine was a stickler for the rules. There were six courses—consommé, pike quenelles, quail, mutton chops with onion custard, a lemon ice, and a currant pudding—which seemed excessive in a way, but Caroline knew that her brother-in-law would only complain if he was given the slightest excuse to do so.

  While they drank the consommé, Grace, fortified by the Countess’s uncharacteristic willingness to provide her with help for her sale, decided to entertain them with family news. “Emma is to have another child.”

  “How lovely. I shall write to her.” Caroline nodded.

  Emma was five years older than her brother, John. She was a pleasant woman, far nicer than the rest of her family, and even Caroline was pleased to hear a good report of her. She had married a local landowner, Sir Hugo Scott, Bart., and they lived the blameless and unimaginative life that was her destiny. Emma’s first child, a daughter named Constance, had been born a gratifying nine months after the marriage, and thereafter Emma had produced a baby every year. This new one would make five. So far, she had three healthy daughters but only one son.

  “We think it’s due in the autumn, although Emma is not quite sure.” Grace took a quick sip of consommé. “Hugo is hoping for a boy this time. An heir and a spare, he keeps saying. An heir and a spare.” She laughed rather merrily, but as she put her spoon back into the soup she caught the look on Caroline’s face and fell silent.

  Caroline was not in fact angry. She was bored. She’d lost count of the number of times Grace or Stephen had regaled her with stories of their numerous boisterous grandchildren. She wasn’t sure if they meant to be hurtful or if they were just profoundly tactless. Peregrine always thought they were being deliberately unpleasant, but Caroline was more inclined to blame their stupidity. She was convinced Grace was too slow-witted to be that studiedly malevolent.

  The footmen cleared the plates in silence. They were used to his lordship not making much of an effort when it came to small talk around the luncheon table, or in fact at any time, and in his brother’s company he was always particularly taciturn. Having put considerable energy in his youth into revitalizing the estate, he had lost his taste for it when his son died, and in his later years he was more inclined to spend the time alone in his library.

  “So,” began Stephen, taking a mouthful of claret, “I was wondering, dear brother, if I might have a little word in private after luncheon.”

  “A private word?” queried Peregrine, leaning back in his chair. “We all know what that means. You want to talk about money.”

  “Well.” Stephen cleared his throat. His pale, sweating face shone brightly in the sunshine that poured in through the windows. He fingered his bands as if to loosen them. “We don’t want to bore the ladies.” His voice was faltering. How he hated being in this position. His brother knew exactly what he wanted, what he needed, and to think it was only due to timing, to chance, to bad luck that he was in this spot. How else could anyone describe his being born a mere two years later than the handsome and once popular Peregrine? Why should he be forced into this humiliating situation?

  “Well, you don’t mind boring me.” Peregrine helped himself to some port and sent the decanter on around.

  “If we could just—”

  “Come on. Out with it.”

  “What my father is asking for is a loan against my future inheritance,” said John, staring at his uncle.

  Peregrine snorted. “Your inheritance, or his?”

  John clearly did not think his father would outlive his uncle, and nor did anyone else in the room. “Our inheritance,” he said smoothly. Peregrine had to admit the young man was well groomed, well dressed, and looked every inch the heir he intended to be. He just didn’t like him.

  “He wants another loan against his inheritance.”

  “Very well. Another loan.” John held his uncle’s stare. He was not easy to outface.

  Peregrine sipped his port. “I think my little brother has chipped away at his prospects quite substantially already.”

  Stephen hated being called “little.” He was sixty-six years old. He had two living children and soon to be five grandchildren. He was seething. “You will agree that the family’s honor demands we keep up appearances. It is our duty to do so.”

  “I wouldn’t agree at all,” said Peregrine. “You must live decently, I grant you, as a country vicar should. But more than that, any kind of show in a man of the cloth the public neither expects nor approves of. One has to ask oneself what you are spending the money on.”

  “On nothing of which you would disapprove.” Stephen was skating on thin ice. Peregrine would disapprove very much if he knew what the money was intended for. “You’ve released funds in the past.”

  “Many times. Too many.” Peregrine shook his head. So this was why his brother had suggested luncheon in the first place, as if he hadn’t known it.

  Things were getting awkward, and Caroline decided to take control of the situation. “Tell me some more about Maria Grey.” She sounded quite surprised in a way. “I thought she’d only just been presented.”

  Grace helped herself to a mutton chop. “No, no. That was
the year before last. She is quite out by now. She’s twenty-one.”

  “Twenty-one.” Caroline looked a little wistful. “How time flies by. I’m surprised Lady Templemore has said nothing to me.” She and Maria’s mother had been friendly acquaintances for years.

  “Perhaps she was waiting until things were quite settled.” Grace smiled.

  “And they are settled now. They have an understanding.” Consciously or unconsciously, Lady Brockenhurst’s tone told the table she thought the idea of this mismatch an unlikely one.

  Grace’s smile became more firm as she put down her knife and fork. “There are one or two details to clarify, but after that we’ll announce it properly.”

  Caroline thought of the pretty, intelligent girl she knew and of her pompous, pushy nephew, and then, inevitably, about her own beautiful son lying stone-cold in the ground.

  “So you see, we, I mean John, needs funds,” said Stephen, glancing appreciatively across at his wife. She had been right to play that card. Surely Peregrine could not really refuse the money. Imagine how badly that might reflect on the family if Peregrine kept his own heir in penury. Particularly as the Countesses were bound to discuss it between themselves almost immediately.

  At last, after the currant pudding and the lemon ices had been consumed, the coffee drunk in the drawing room, the gardens toured, Stephen, John, and Grace left. They had secured enough cash to pay their tailors, as well as the other debts that Stephen had failed to mention. Peregrine retired to his library.

  It was with a heavy heart that he sat down next to the fire in his large leather armchair, attempting to read some Pliny. He preferred the Elder to the Younger, as he liked dealing in the facts of history and science; but this afternoon the words didn’t dance off the page but rather half swam before his eyes. He’d read the same paragraph three times when Caroline walked through the door.

  “You were quiet at luncheon. What’s the matter?” she said.

  Peregrine closed the volume and sat in silence for a moment. He stared around the room at the line of portraits above the mahogany bookcases, stern-looking men in periwigs, women laced into their satin dresses, his forebears, his family, who had lent their blood to him, the last of his immediate line. Then he looked back at his wife. “Why does my brother, a man who never said or did anything of the slightest value, live to see his children married and his grandchildren gathered round his chair?”

  “Oh, my dear.” Caroline sat down next to him and put her hand on his thin knee.

  “I’m sorry,” said Peregrine, shaking his head as his face flushed. “I’m being a silly old man. But sometimes I can’t help railing at the injustice of it all.”

  “And you think I don’t?”

  He sighed. “Do you ever wonder what he would be like now? Married, of course, and rather fatter than when we knew him. With clever sons and pretty daughters.”

  “Perhaps he’d have had clever daughters and pretty sons.”

  “The point is, he’s not here. Our son, Edmund, is gone, and God knows I don’t understand why it had to happen to us.” Peregrine Brockenhurst suffered from the Englishman’s lack of ease when it came to discussing his emotions, that could at times be more poignant than fluency. He took hold of his wife’s hand and squeezed it. His pale blue eyes were watering. “I am sorry, my dear, I’m being very foolish.” He looked at his wife with something like tenderness. “I suppose I can’t help wondering what is the point of it all.” But then he laughed drily, pulling himself together. “Don’t listen to me,” he said. “I must stop drinking port. Port always makes me miserable.”

  Caroline stroked the back of his hand. It would have been so easy to tell him the truth, tell him that he had a grandson, an heir to his blood if not to his position. But she did not know all the facts. Had Anne Trenchard been speaking the truth? She needed to investigate. And she had promised that woman to stay silent. In her defense, Caroline was a person who usually kept her promises.

  No amount of valerian seemed to help Anne’s terrible headache. She felt as if her skull were being cut in two with a steel knife. She knew the cause and, while she was not prone to histrionics, she recognized that her lonely walk home to Eaton Square after her interview with Lady Brockenhurst was one of the most difficult of her life.

  She had been shaking so much when she arrived back at number 110 that when she knocked on her own front door she failed to offer any form of explanation for the state she was in. Billy had been terribly puzzled when he answered. What was his mistress doing out on her own, shivering like a jelly? Where was Quirk, the coachman? It was all very confusing and provided them with plenty to discuss down in the servants’ hall as they waited to be fed later that night. But no one was more confused than Anne as she wandered slowly upstairs to her rooms.

  “It was like she was in a daze,” said her maid, Ellis, as she sat down at the table that evening. “Just hugging that dog and rocking in her chair.”

  The years had not been overly kind to Ellis. After the heady days of Waterloo, when the streets of Brussels teemed with handsome soldiers who liked nothing more than a bit of chat with a pretty lady’s maid, she’d found the move to London a little too sedate for her liking. She would talk about her friend Jane Croft, Miss Sophia’s maid in the old days, who was doing well for herself as a housekeeper in the country now, and Ellis was always threatening to go off and try something similar. But, truth be told, she knew she’d be a fool to leave. She hankered after employment in a more illustrious household, and it bothered her that she did not work for a family with a title, but the Trenchards paid their servants more than most of the aristocrats she’d ever heard of, and the food they served below stairs was significantly better than anywhere else she’d come across. Mrs. Babbage had a proper budget and she served meat at nearly every meal.

  “She’s not wrong,” agreed Billy, rubbing his hands together as he inhaled the smell of stewed beef and potatoes from the large copper pot in the middle of the table. “I mean, who’s ever heard of a mistress walking about the streets alone like that? She was off doing something she didn’t want the master finding out about, that’s for sure.”

  “Do you think she’s got a fancy man?” giggled one of the housemaids.

  “Mercy, go to your room!”

  Mrs. Frant stood in the doorway, hands on hips, dressed in a black high-necked shirt and black skirt, a pale green cameo pinned at her throat. She had only been working for the Trenchards for three years, but she had been in service long enough to know it was a job worth keeping, and so she suffered no nonsense below stairs.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Frant. I was only—”

  “You were only going upstairs with no dinner, and if I hear one more word you’ll be out without a reference tomorrow.”

  The girl sniffed but did not attempt any further defense. As she scuttled away, Mrs. Frant took her place.

  “Now, we will converse in a genteel fashion, but we will not make our employers the subject of our conversation.”

  “All the same, Mrs. Frant”—Ellis was anxious to show that she did not consider herself under the housekeeper’s command—“it is quite unlike the mistress to have such a head it needs valerian. I’ve not seen her so unwell since she and Miss Sophia went to visit that ailing cousin of hers in Derbyshire.” The two women exchanged a rather piercing look.

  In lieu of any explanation, all James Trenchard could do was speculate as to why his wife had taken to her bed and why she had asked for her supper to be sent up on a tray. He assumed it had something to do with Charles Pope and his refusal to allow Anne to share the young man’s existence with Lady Brockenhurst, and while he had not changed his mind on this, still he was anxious to get back on good terms with his wife as soon as he could decently manage it. So when he came across the card among the letters delivered in the last post inviting her to a reception at Kew Gardens, he decided he would take it up there and then, in the hope that it might lift her spirits. She was very fond of gardening and an
enthusiastic supporter of Kew, as he knew well.

  “I could come, too,” he suggested merrily as he watched her turn the card over in her hands. She was propped up against her pillows and looking generally wan, but she was interested. He could tell.

  “All the way out to Kew?” replied Anne. “You barely walk the length of the gardens at Glanville if you can avoid it.” But she was smiling.

  “Susan might like to go.”

  “Susan dislikes flowers and can’t see beauty in anything that doesn’t glitter in Mr. Asprey’s window. She made me take her to see the new shop last week. I could hardly drag her back into the carriage.”

  “I can imagine,” nodded James, smiling. “That reminds me. After our dinner conversation the other night, I’ve been wondering if I might try to get Oliver a little more advanced in the business. He’s pootling around on the edge of it at the moment, and maybe he needs some direction. I have a meeting with William Cubitt tomorrow about the Isle of Dogs project, and if Oliver does want to be involved, as he implied, I thought I could try to sell the idea.”

  “But do you think he really meant it?” said Anne. “It doesn’t sound like Oliver’s sort of thing at all.”

  “Perhaps he should be a little less choosy about what interests him.” James didn’t mean to snap, but the disdain with which Oliver treated the idea of trade and hard work annoyed him.

  “Well, I suppose it can’t hurt,” said Anne. “You might as well ask.”

  It was not quite the reaction that James had hoped for. It would be quite an imposition to ask William Cubitt to give his son a larger stake in the business, a business in which Oliver had so far shown little aptitude or interest. For all their lucrative partnership, it was a bold move.

  Anne could see his concern and she felt the same, but somehow she could not summon up much fight. She had always prided herself on her ability to judge a situation; she could read people well and kept her cards close to her chest. She wasn’t one of these foolish women who become indiscreet after one glass of Champagne. So what had she been thinking when she told the truth to Lady Brockenhurst? Had she been intimidated by the Countess? Or had she simply been carrying the burden on her own for too long? The fact remained, she’d told a secret of unimaginable magnitude, a secret that could cause them unlimited damage, to a total stranger, a woman she knew little or nothing about, and in doing so she had given Lady Brockenhurst the ammunition to bring down Anne’s entire family. The question was, would she use it? She rang for Ellis to take Agnes for her evening walk.