Sixpenny Stalls

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Your brother is, I think.’

  She admitted that, languidly – ‘Oh, he looks well enough.’ Do married people? she wondered. But she couldn’t ask. There was so much about marriage she didn’t know and couldn’t ask. It was all a very great mystery, and never more so than on a wedding day, when the air was full of unfamiliar emotions, the married women sighing and worldly-wise, the unmarried bright and brittle, and a sort of excited expectation pervading everything, as though something tremendous was going to happen that nobody would talk about. ‘I don’t think I would like to see a man with no clothes on, would you Euphemia?’

  But Euphemia was still in India on another golden day, oh years and years ago, standing with her ayah in the Temple of the Sun in Konarak, lost in wonder at the beauty of the carvings, life-sized couples amorously entwined, their stone hands rapturously fondling, their stone faces seraphic with satisfaction. The undeniable, overwhelming, holy beauty of love, accepted so openly in India, but taboo here in England.

  That had always seemed most extraordinary, although she accepted the taboo, of course, for she would never willingly have done anything to upset anyone and particularly when they’d been so kind to her. Nan Easter had accepted her into her family as if she belonged there, allowing her to spend every single holiday with Caroline, as though they were sisters, furnishing this room to suit them both, permitting her to stay on as a member of the family when she really ought to have followed her brothers back to India, meeting all the expenses of this season. It would have been unthinkable to do anything to upset such a dear kind lady.

  ‘Euphemia?’ Caroline said.

  But the dear kind lady herself was at the door, leaning on her ebony stick and already dressed in a ball gown of deep blue silk and black lace, her grey hair beautifully arranged beneath a head-dress made entirely of blue feathers. ‘My dear heart alive,’ she said, brown eyes teasing, ‘en’t you dressed yet, you bad critturs? Shame on ‘ee both. We shall have the carriages here presently.’

  Euphemia got up at once and picked up her gown from the bed, but Caroline went on admiring her reflection.

  ‘Do I look saintly, Nan?’ she asked.

  ‘Angelic,’ her grandmother said shortly. ‘Now get your stays on, or the carriage will be here and you won’t be ready. I shall send Bessie up to chivvy you along.’

  Caroline had been putting off the moment when those stays had to be put on, because she knew it was going to be difficult and painful. When her gown was being made, she had decided that if she couldn’t be the prettiest girl at Aunt Matilda’s opening ball then she would at least have the smallest waist. So she had laced herself as tightly as she could and had instructed her dressmaker to cut the gown to fit a waist of eighteen inches. Now she would have to face the consequences of her vanity. She picked up the tape-measure and took it across to the bed, where the dreaded corset was waiting, smoothed her chemise as close to her skin as she could and arranged the stays very carefully about her waist, for the slightest fold of cloth beneath the whalebone would nip her flesh most painfully. Then she stood beside the bed-post to be laced.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Euphemia asked, standing poised behind her with the drawstrings in her hand.

  Caroline took a deep breath, pulled in her waist as hard as she could, grabbed the bed-post and nodded. Speech was impossible, of course, but speech wasn’t needed.

  The strings were pulled tight, tighter and tighter still, until both girls were panting with the effort they were making.

  ‘Eighteen and a half inches,’ Euphemia said, examining the tape-measure.

  ‘Ooof!’ Caroline panted, catching her breath as well as she could with her lungs so constricted. ‘It feels like twelve. Pull again.’

  But she had to admit that the gown looked extremely fine once her waist was the right size for it. The new fashion was so pretty with straight-cut simple sleeves and a lovely neat bodice above the widest skirts you could imagine. Of course you had to wear at least four petticoats if it was to look really well, and one of them had to be made of horse hair, which could be scratchy if you weren’t careful, but the resulting image was well worth it, especially when you were wearing dove-grey silk embroidered with white and pink flowers and flounced with yards and yards of pink lace.

  ‘Yes,’ Nan said, ‘you’ll do. Now lace Euphemia. You have a quarter of an hour. No more dreaming, Carrie.’

  Caroline’s stays began to nip her on the way to Uncle Billy’s house and during the reception, when she stood in line with Aunt Matilda and Uncle Billy and Edward and Will and Euphemia greeting their guests, she found it quite hard to breathe. But to be here, at her very first ball, in a ball room dizzy with the scent of flowers and the glitter of jewels and a positive blaze of gaslight, and all her friends around her so grand and self-conscious in their new fashionable clothes, and the band tuning up ready to play, and that odd excitement swelling and pulsing in her chest, why it was all so pleasant that any discomfort was easily ignored. Whatever she might think of Aunt Matilda and that dratted Edward of hers she had to admit that they knew how to organize a ball.

  That dratted Edward had actually been responsible for most of the arrangements for this one. For the past six years he had gradually taken over responsibility for the warehouses, using his talent for mathematics to order the stock, and his organizational skills to ensure that delivery and despatch were both handled methodically. But he felt that he was above such menial tasks and worth far more than the pittance his grandmother paid him, so it was soothing to be the centre of the family during the season. And this year when it was agreed that the opening ball was to be given in his house and in his name, he took an interest in every single detail, supervising the delivery of chairs and trestle tables, advising on the hiring of pastry cooks and wine waiters and the quality and quantity of the food, even querying the number of players in the string band his mother had hired. After ten days of it even Matilda’s doting patience wore thin and Billy took to drifting in and out of the resulting chaos like an amiable ghost.

  But from the first notes of the opening quadrille Edward turned his energies elsewhere, being all charm to his dancing partners, particularly when they were well-born and wealthy. For he was on the look-out for a rich wife. He had accepted that he was unlikely to obtain the power and influence he desired from his present position in the firm, so with unthinking arrogance he had decided to get it by marriage. By the end of this first season he had marked down five possibilities and by the middle of the second, when the three younger and prettier ones had made it clear that they did not like him – and the more fools they! – he had decided to offer for the other two, both older than he was and both undeniably plain, but both the possessors of considerable fortunes. The first indicated that her interest was not strong enough to warrant courtship, so now he was about to pay court to the second, a certain Miss Mirabelle Artenshaw, who had a cast in one eye, a flat bosom, no surviving parents and a twelve thousand pound inheritance.

  Caroline was intrigued when she saw them dancing together. ‘Whoever is that?’ she asked Bessie, when she and Euphemia returned to their chaperone at the end of the waltz.

  ‘Miss Mirabelle Artenshaw,’ Bessie sniffed. ‘And he’ll marry her I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘But she’s old!’

  ‘Old and rich,’ Bessie said, sucking her teeth with disapproval.

  ‘Pheemy!’ Caroline said. ‘How could he do such a thing?’

  ‘He might love her,’ Euphemia suggested generously.

  ‘But she’s hideous!’

  ‘Beauty in the eye of the beholder?’ Euphemia suggested.

  ‘Humph!’ Bessie snorted. ‘All that young man can see is pounds, shillings and pence.’

  ‘I wonder what Nan thinks of it,’ Caroline said. And she made up her mind to ask her as soon as she got the chance.

  But to her surprise Nan seemed to be supporting the match.

  ‘I’ve invited the lady to dine with us a’ Thursday,’ she said,
‘and join us at the opera afterwards, so you’ll have the chance to see her for yourself, won’t ‘ee my dear?’

  It turned out to be a very interesting dinner party, for despite her peculiar figure, which would have been perfectly straight all the way down if it hadn’t been for her stays, and that odd clouded eye, which was most disconcerting because you could never be sure whether it was looking at you or not, Miss Artenshaw was good company. She knew so many of the new poets and pretty well all the novelists, and what was more, she’d read all their books, even the ones that had just been printed and weren’t even in the lending libraries yet.

  ‘Miss Barrett has a new book of poetry out this very week,’ she told John and Nan.

  ‘I saw the advertisement of it,’ John said. ‘Is it as good as they claim?’

  ‘I cannot speak for others,’ Miss Artenshaw said, ‘for all art is a matter of taste, is it not? I enjoyed it beyond measure and think it quite her best.’

  She’d read Mr Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit and Nicholas Nickleby and The Christmas Carol and Mr Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Mr Disraeli’s new novel, Sybil, which she seemed to have understood.

  Even Nan was impressed to hear that. ‘I used to dine with poets when I was young,’ she said, ‘and powerful good company they were.’

  Miss Artenshaw was very interested. ‘I should love to hear of it, Mrs Easter,’ she said, ‘and to know who they were.’

  ‘William Blake was one,’ Nan said. ‘But he’s gone out of fashion long since, I fear.’

  ‘A great man,’ Miss Artenshaw said warmly. ‘I have a copy of his Songs of Innocence and Experience. Profundity and simplicity combined.’

  ‘You have the man to a T,’ Nan said.

  Caroline lost interest in this literary talk because the strawberry syllabub was being served, so there were other, more delicious things to occupy her, but she noticed that Edward was looking most put out by the conversation, as if he didn’t understand it either, and that pleased her, especially when Will noticed too and winked across the table at her in that nice conspiratorial way of his.

  Nan and Papa and Miss Artenshaw talked all through dinner, and would have gone on talking all through the opera too if Edward hadn’t insisted that she sit by him in the corner of the box, ‘for I declare I must hear your opinion of the production, my dear Miss Artenshaw, there being no other lady whose opinion I value more highly.’

  ‘He didn’t mean a word of it,’ Caroline said to Nan and Will and Euphemia when they were in their carriage and on the way home. ‘You only had to look at his face. He was putting on a show.’

  ‘What happened to Christian charity, Miss Easter?’ Will teased.

  ‘I daresay he wanted a little of her company to himself,’ Euphemia said, ‘which is only to be expected if he means to marry her.’

  ‘He don’t mean to marry her,’ Caroline said. ‘He couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ Nan laughed. ‘She’s rich enough in all conscience, and ‘tis my opinion she’d be more than a match for him. A crittur of sense, our Miss Artenshaw. She could be the making of our Edward.’

  Caroline didn’t think much of that for an answer. ‘But she’s over thirty,’ she said. ‘I think it’s scandalous, I do indeed.’

  ‘To be over thirty or to marry for money?’ Nan asked, laughing again.

  ‘Both.’

  ‘What do you think, Will?’

  ‘Nothing may come of it,’ Will said diplomatically. ‘It’s a long way to the altar rail.’

  ‘But most of us reach it in the end, eh?’

  ‘So they say, grandmama.’

  In fact, Will Easter still had no intention of arriving at that particular place, whatever his cousin might be planning to do. But he kept his thoughts on the subject to himself, for there was no need to provoke trouble. He simply made private plans in order to protect his independence.

  By now he was resigned to the fact that he would have to work in the firm for as long as he could foresee. Billy’s gradual return to the warehouse had made it impossible for him to find the right moment to extricate himself. There had never been a day when things changed, that was the trouble. Billy took over part of his old job in a piecemeal fashion, a day at a time, with Edward in virtual command but supposedly assisting him, and day by day Will was inched into another and even more demanding one. During the last six years more than thirty new railways had been built and countless new sections of track opened on the existing ones, and every new piece of railway meant a negotiation for the transfer of the transportation of the Easter papers from stage-coach to rail. It was very demanding work and in an odd kind of way he quite enjoyed it, although he resented the way it had been wished upon him.

  But that was all the more reason why he should avoid the complication of being wished into marriage too. So he resolved to dance with any young woman his aunt manoeuvred towards him, which would please her, but never to dance more than once with any one of them, which would keep him safe from gossip and matrimonial ambitions. The only trouble was that in order to plead a full dance card to Aunt Matilda, he had to book all the other dances with somebody else and somebody safe, and the only young women who were really safe were his sister Caroline and Euphemia, who was as good as a sister nowadays.

  They were very helpful about it. In fact Euphemia was an absolute brick, allowing him to fill in all the spaces with her name, whenever he needed to. It was a real pleasure to dance with her, to talk about everything and anything without feeling anxious.

  ‘It’s such a burden,’ he confessed at their third ball. ‘Sometimes I can feel the pressure Aunt Matilda puts upon me as though it were a weight around my neck. I’m sure I never asked her to find me a wife. Now she says I’ve danced three waltzes with you and the next one is to go to that awul Cholmondley woman. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Shall you do as she says?’ Euphemia asked, from within the supporting circle of his arm.

  ‘We will walk in the garden instead,’ he said, ‘if you are agreeable.’

  And she was, very agreeable, strolling beside him in the moonlight with her fingers resting lightly on his arm and her lovely calm face listening attentively to every word he said. So he told her how much he wished he could work as a reporter again, and travel the world, and write for The Times.

  ‘But then you know what a fine thing it is to travel the world, do you not?’ he said.

  ‘I have travelled, yes,’ she agreed. But she didn’t sound enthusiastic.

  ‘Did you not enjoy it?’ he asked, surprised by her reaction.

  ‘I was sick for a great deal of the time, I fear. I do not travel well. And I missed my ayah of course. We had never been parted for more than a day before then.’

  ‘But you were with your parents, surely?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. And she spoke the word with such a touching mixture of sadness and resignation that he knew in that instant that the Callbecks had ignored her on the voyage just as they ignored her in England.

  ‘You were lonely,’ he said, remembering his own loneliness when his mother died.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. And then feeling she had to explain, ‘My father had a great deal of business to attend to. I could not expect him to spend time with me. It is not the custom for parents to spend time with their children in India, you see.’ There wasn’t a hint of criticism in her voice, only this gentle, rather weary resignation.

  ‘Do you miss them, Euphemia?’ he asked, knowing the answer before she gave it, but wanting to hear it just the same.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t. I daresay I should when you consider who they are, but I haven’t seen them for so long, you see, and I am so happy here with you and Carrie and Nan. I write to them twice a year of course.’

  ‘Do they reply?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, grimacing at the thought of their letters. ‘They tell me all about their business ventures and what a lot of money they are making and how successful my brothers are. I can
not say I know any more about them than that, for they never write of other things, and they never answer any of my questions. In fact, horrid though it is to say it, I really don’t think they read my letters at all.’

  This was no surprise to Will. How patient she is, he thought, admiring her resignation and yet irritated by it too. She is too good, too meek, she complains too little, and that is the surest way to be put upon. If that were Caroline she’d fight back and let them know how unfair they were being. ‘That is how I remember them,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘They are rather like my other grandparents, I think.’

  ‘Your other grandparents?’ Euphemia asked. This was the first time she’d ever heard of such people.

  ‘My mother’s parents,’ he explained. ‘They were a terrible pair, hard cruel people. They didn’t love my poor mother at all. I can remember it very well. In the end Nan sent them packing and none of us have ever heard a word from them since. Which in my opinion is just as well, for they certainly wouldn’t have fitted into the family.’

  ‘Do you not feel the lack of them?’

  ‘Not a bit,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Nan is grandmother enough for me.’

  ‘And for me,’ she said. ‘I never knew anyone with so much love in her.’

  ‘It is a riddle to me,’ he confessed, ‘why some people find love so easy while others are hardly capable of it at all.’

  But as he spoke them, the words sounded altogether too daring, so he decided to change the subject, in case the intimacy of this conversation was overstepping the mark. ‘Shall you ride in the Park tomorrow?’

  ‘If the weather holds.’

  ‘I wish I could join you,’ he said, and meant it. ‘But Papa and I are both off at first light.’