Julian Fellowes's Belgravia

by Julian Fellowes

  The fruit had come in, arranged on a silver epergne with little baskets held around a central bowl of roses all filled with plums and grapes and nectarines, glistening in the light of the candelabra at either end of the table. It looked like something from a painting by Caravaggio, thought Anne. Mrs. Babbage could be quite artistic when she put her mind to it. She had ordered a good dinner to send Oliver and Susan on their way, and, to be honest, she was pleased that Susan had somehow brought her son around. Anne intended to abide by the agreement and never mention the child’s paternity again. For a second she had thought of telling Caroline Brockenhurst that now all of Anne’s grandchildren would have Bellasis blood, but she knew that if she told even one person, eventually James would hear, and that she did not want. So Susan’s secret was safe with her, and Anne was glad. She wasn’t exactly fond of her daughter-in-law, but she thought Susan clever and competent when she put her mind to anything, and this latest fright, this brush with scandal, seemed to have brought her out of the selfish mist she moved around in and made her engage with the practicalities of their new life. Dr. Johnson wrote that if a man knows he is to be hanged the following morning, it concentrates the mind wonderfully, and maybe the same could be said of the threat of ruin. Anne was sorry to have surrendered Glanville. She would go there for visits, perhaps not much less than she did already, but it would no longer be her kingdom. Queen Susan would henceforth rule. Still, she knew it was a sacrifice worth making, to allow her son to live his own life instead of his father’s.

  But when Anne looked down the table at her son, she realized that something still appeared to be troubling Oliver. She’d tried once or twice over the past few days to ask him what it might be, but with no success. He’d answered her inquiries, insisting that there was nothing amiss, but still…

  “Have you seen Mr. Pope lately, Father?” Oliver’s words were a surprise, since they all knew he had no love for Charles Pope and would normally have preferred to steer clear of the subject. As far as Anne and James knew, he still had no idea of Charles’s true identity, as James felt it only right that Charles should learn it first, or at least no later than everyone else. He was, of course, quite ignorant of Susan’s role in the story, and Anne was not going to disabuse him. So she was content that Oliver should find out once Charles, Lord Brockenhurst and the Templemores had been told at dinner the following evening.

  After pausing a moment to get over the strangeness of the question, James looked at his son. “What do you mean, ‘lately’?”

  “In the past week.” Oliver was eating a peach and some of the juice dribbled down his chin. Susan noticed it and felt her jaw tightening with irritation, but she forced herself to let it go. If he wanted to have juice on his chin, then so be it. It was his chin, after all.

  “No,” said James. “He’s moved lodgings to have some more space for his mother—” He caught Anne’s glance and corrected himself. “For Mrs. Pope, who is coming to live with him. He knew he would need a while to settle her in.”

  Oliver nodded. “Do you know where those lodgings are?”

  James shook his head as he began to peel a peach, puzzled as to where this conversation might be leading. “Somewhere in Holborn, I think. Why?”

  “No reason,” his son replied. Anne caught Billy glancing at Oliver in curiosity until he saw her watching him and blushed. She would have to call him Watson now that he was the butler. They all would.

  “I think there is a reason.” James’s voice had an edge to it, and Anne supposed it was because he knew he would have to defend Charles against Oliver’s criticism. But the younger man didn’t seem aggressive or angry or even rude. If she’d had to put a name to his mood, she would have said he was worried. “Oliver, can you come with me?” James threw down his fruit knife and stood, discarding his crumpled napkin on the table. He led the way across the hall to the library.

  They walked in silence, but once they were there James shut the door and spoke. “Now, what is going on? Why are you preoccupied, and what has this to do with Charles Pope?”

  In a way, now the question had come, it was a relief for Oliver to unburden himself. How he’d gone to the Horse and Groom hot with anger; how John Bellasis had found him there. “He knew I was in a rage about Pope, though I don’t know how, and he started to question me. He was curious about the man, and, as we know, Pope is a great favorite with Mr. Bellasis’s aunt. Perhaps he was jealous. I know I was.”

  “But what happened? What did he do? What did you do?” Anxious for something to occupy his hands, James seized the poker and began to stir the dying fire back into life.

  Oliver did not speak at once. He tried to think of ways to make what he had to say sound less serious. But he could not. “He said he wanted to teach Pope a lesson.”

  “What sort of lesson?”

  “I don’t know. I was pretty drunk before he arrived. And I was angry with Pope myself.”

  “You don’t have to explain that you wished Charles Pope ill. I would expect nothing else from you. Go on.” His tone was anything but conciliatory, but Oliver had begun, so now he might as well finish.

  “He asked me to write a note to Mr. Pope. He said he couldn’t write the note himself, as Pope didn’t care for him and wouldn’t respond to it. But if I wrote a message, saying that I was sorry we had fallen out, and that it would give you pleasure if we could be reconciled, then Pope might agree to meet me.”

  “It would give me pleasure?” James gave a derisive snort.

  “Somehow Bellasis knew you were unhappy that I’d taken against your protégé. Anyway, I wrote the note and had a drink with him and left.”

  James stared in disbelief. “You wrote a letter to lure Charles Pope to a place where he… what? He would be beaten up? By thugs arranged by Mr. Bellasis? Was that it?”

  “I told you, I was drunk.”

  “But not too drunk to hold a pen, by God.” For Oliver, his father’s fury was washing away the precious peace he had been reaching for since they had made the decision to let him escape to Glanville. Here he was, once again, a disappointment, a failure, a fool. “When was this meeting to take place?”

  “He didn’t say. He wouldn’t let me date the note, so that he could choose when to send it. I suppose he had to arrange a reception committee, and make sure everything was prepared. That’s why I asked if you’d heard from Pope.”

  “Where was he to meet you? Or rather, to meet Bellasis?”

  For Oliver, it was as if he’d been carrying a dangerous, half-formed secret locked in a bottle for the days since he’d done this thing. He had not wanted to acknowledge that he’d been stupid and a dupe, but of course he had. Now it seemed the poisonous secret had escaped from the bottle and it had grown large enough to push everything else out of his mind. “I can’t remember.”

  “Then try harder!” James strode to the bell rope and gave it a tug. When the footman hurried across the hall from the dining room, James shouted almost before he’d opened the door. “Send the boy to tell Quirk to get a carriage out! The brougham! We’ll need to go fast!”

  Oliver was bewildered. “But go where? You don’t know his present address, and I can’t recall where the note invited him. And why should it be tonight?”

  James stared at him. “If it’s already happened and he’s seriously hurt, then I’ll never forgive you. If it hasn’t happened yet, then we’ll warn him, even if we have to wait all night outside his office. Now where was the meeting place? In the City? In the country? You must know that, at least!”

  Oliver thought. “I think it was in the City. Yes, because he said Pope would be able to walk there from his place of work.”

  “Then we’ll start in Bishopsgate. Get your coat, while I speak to your mother.” James walked toward the door.

  “Father.”

  James stopped at the sound of his son’s voice. He turned to look at him.

  “I’m sorry.” It was true. Oliver’s face was white with regret.

  “Not as
sorry as you’re going to be if anything’s happened to him.”

  John Bellasis shivered, though whether from the cold or the prospect ahead of him it was hard to tell. He had dismissed his hansom some streets away from Allhallows Lane, as he did not want the cabby to have a clue as to his destination, so he was walking through the East End of London at night, unaccompanied, alone.

  When Oliver Trenchard had left him that night at the Horse and Groom, he’d put the note away, telling himself that he’d never use it. Thinking that he could somehow absolve himself of the guilt for having it written in the first place. Of course, he knew why he had made Oliver write it. He knew what he had intended from the moment he saw Oliver in the bar, and he was suddenly clear, in that second of seeing him, that it was within his reach to dispose of the obstacle to his own personal happiness. Yet still he hesitated.

  He’d waited every day for the summons from his uncle. Would he and his father please come to Brockenhurst House, as there was some news that would have a bearing on their future? But it never came. There was no announcement in the newspapers, no letter from Aunt Caroline, nothing. The Trenchards must know the truth by now, since he himself had given them the proof, as it pained him to remember. Then it occurred to him that they must be waiting until everything could be vouchsafed as true and legal. That no one would be told, perhaps not even the Brockenhursts, until Charles Pope’s claims could be validated and upheld in court. And from that followed the thought that if he could bring himself to do this deed, if he could find the courage—for it was a kind of courage that was required—then he must do it before the announcements had been made. The death of a viscount, the heir of an earl, would be splashed across every newspaper and journal in the land. But the death of a young cotton merchant, just starting to build his business… that would barely warrant a tiny column in the bottom corner of the page.

  Still he delayed. He would sit alone in his rooms, staring at the note Oliver had written, until at last he began to suspect that he lacked the nerve to do what he must do if he was to correct the hideous injustice that fate had planned for him. Did he, after all, lack courage? Was he afraid of detection and the hangman’s noose? But if he did not act, and every hope and dream were dashed to the ground and lay in pieces at his feet, was the life that awaited him any better than the noose?

  Through these days, he stayed inside, locked in his rooms. He dined alone, waited on by his silent servant whose wages, he thought with a twinge of humor, were anything but safe. He drank alone and in some quantity, sure in the knowledge that even his simple life—and it was comparatively simple next to the lives of so many of his more fortunate contemporaries—would be at risk the moment the news broke that he was no longer an heir with a future but a man drowning in debt with no promise of an income. His debtors would close in like sharks, hoping to seize what little money remained, and his father could not save him. Indeed, Stephen’s troubles were, if anything, worse than his son’s. They would both be declared bankrupt, and what came next? A life of destitution in Paris or Calais, eking out the tiny pension that Charles Pope (he could not bring himself to think of his cousin as Charles Bellasis) might be persuaded to grant? Was that really preferable to seizing a chance, a challenge, that must end in triumph or the gallows?

  And so, such thinking had brought him to the morning of that very day, after a sleepless night. He took out an envelope and, with the note open before him, imitated the writing well enough for one word, Pope, before he put the note inside and sealed it with wax. He carried it outside, waited until he was some distance from Albany, and hailed a hansom cab, giving the driver the address of Pope’s office and a tip to deliver the letter.

  As he walked away, he told himself the man might have been a rogue who would pocket the money, destroy the envelope, and take up another passenger as soon as he was hailed. Let it be, he thought. If that was what happened, then that was what was meant to happen. But still he knew he must prepare. He must go early to the Black Raven, he must scout the distance from the public house to the river, he must finalize a plan. Once more he spent all day in his rooms, lying on his bed or pacing the floor. From time to time he would toy with the idea of simply not going, of letting Charles arrive to find no one there to greet him. He would ask for Oliver Trenchard, of course, not John Bellasis, and the innkeeper would shrug, having no knowledge of the name, and Charles would go home and get up on the morrow, ready and able to steal everything that should have been John’s. But as he considered this final thought, he knew he must act. Even if he failed, he would have tried. He would not have submitted to the cruelty of the gods without a struggle.

  “I will be late tonight, Roger,” he said to his servant as the man held his topcoat open for him. “Do not expect me before the small hours. But if I am not in my bed by eight o’clock tomorrow morning, then you may start to make inquiries as to my whereabouts.”

  “Where should I look, sir?” said the man, but John just shook his head and did not answer.

  “Murder?” Oliver’s shock at his father’s suggestion was quite genuine. Even though James was in the grip of a rage so powerful it threatened to unhinge his mind, he could still see that.

  Oliver had thought Charles Pope was threatened with violence but no more than that. He could see John Bellasis hated the man, if anything more than Oliver himself hated him, but that had seemed to indicate a beating was in order. And Bellasis would get away with it. He would no doubt hire men to do the dirty work. They would run off, leaving no clue for the Peelers to work with, and the matter would be soon forgotten. But murder? James’s suspicions seemed outlandish to his son. John Bellasis, try to murder Charles Pope?

  “But why?” he said.

  They had a way to go to reach Bishopsgate, and James could see no reason to leave Oliver in the dark any longer. As they journeyed through the gaslit streets, he told the story: the marriage in Brussels, Sophia’s mistake in thinking she had been betrayed, Charles’s true identity. Most of all he spoke of the threat to John Bellasis’s inheritance, which would only recede should Charles Pope disappear forever.

  Oliver was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. “You should have told me, sir. Not now. Long ago, before you knew who Charles Pope really was. Whether well born or a bastard, he is still my nephew, and you should have told me.”

  “We worried about Sophia’s reputation.”

  “Do you think I could not have kept silent to protect my sister’s name?”

  For once James did not snap back at Oliver’s argument because it was a reasonable charge, which James was forced to concede. He had made the same mistake with Anne, and come to repent that. Why didn’t he trust the members of his own family? It was his weakness, not theirs, that had kept him silent. He sat back in his seat as the carriage rolled on through the night.

  Maria walked back to Belgrave Square from Chesham Street in the company of her mother’s footman. There really was no need to get a coach out for a ten-minute journey, and she enjoyed the cool night air. She was lighthearted, with a spring in her step, and she would probably have dismissed the man if she wasn’t aware that it would have annoyed her mother, which was the very last thing she wanted to do that evening. She’d always known that Reggie would make things better, and so it had proved. Now, of course, Charles had to pass her brother’s test, but she was confident he would. He was a gentleman, after all. Not a great catch, but a gentleman, certainly. And hardworking and intelligent and everything else that Reggie valued. And the truth was, she was touched, very touched, by the way her mother had yielded to her son’s decision.

  Maria had been strong and determined in her struggle. She had moved out of her mother’s house and, in a sense, made Corinne quarrel with her old friend Lady Brockenhurst. She had been cold and unyielding when her mother had tried to argue the case for John Bellasis, pointing out that if the man cared for her, why was he not there to argue the case for himself? But Maria did not like quarreling with her sole living parent. Her father had b
een a harsh man, with his children as much as his wife, and when he’d died, though they would not admit it, the three of them had a slight sense of having survived him, of relief that they were still going and he was out of the picture. She knew that Reggie felt, as she did, that their mother had earned her years of peace, and it pained Maria for them to be at odds. Now that was done. She had no doubt that once her mother got to know Charles she would like him, reluctantly at first, perhaps, but she would. And whether or not he came to like her, still he would protect Lady Templemore and see to her comfort, so that in the end the benefits of the marriage would be much the same as they would have been with John. They were, and would be from now on, a united family, and that was the way Maria liked it.

  She had reached Brockenhurst House and the door was opened by the night watchman, who always sat in an arched, padded leather chair in a corner of the hall, wide awake, or so he said, until he was relieved by the butler at eight o’clock. She dismissed her mother’s footman and started toward the stairs after bidding the watchman good night. But he had a message for her. “Her ladyship’s waiting for you, m’lady. In the boudoir.”

  Maria was surprised. “She hasn’t gone to bed?”

  “No, m’lady.” The man was quite sure. “She was most particular that I was to tell you she was waiting up to see you.”

  “Very well. Thank you.” Maria had reached the stairs by this time, and she started to climb.

  Charles came out of the front door of his new lodgings and took a deep breath. The chill of the air was refreshing after the slightly overheated sitting room he had passed the evening in with his mother. But he’d been glad to spend the time with her. She was excited at the idea of her new life, and there was something heartening in the confidence she always displayed as far as his future prospects were concerned. She knew his business would soon be expanding throughout the world, and that he would make a fortune. She was equally certain he would buy a house in the most fashionable part of London and she would be able to run it for him, until his wife arrived, of course. And apparently none of this was going to take any time at all.