“What’s your first name, Mr. Ogilvie?”
“William, ma’am.”
“There, George, do you hear? Another uncle for you. We’ve got a Bill already. This can be uncle Will.”
It was useless to protest, and the brat was kicking. A stampede up the stairs, the whole crew following. Young Manners stumbled against him, red, perspiring.
“Cripplegate started this, God’s curse upon him. Said it kept him fit, in perfect training. Saved him a packet at gymnasium too.”
“Why not refuse?”
“And be thrown out? No bloody fear.”
Manners’ reward, then, was worth ordeal by water? He’d won his spurs, and Ogilvie had not. He threw the screaming boy into a tub.
“Darling, let uncle Will sponge handies first.”
Handies be blowed. He couldn’t hold the brat. The water was in his eyes, his mouth, his hair. Smack!! came a cake of soap across his chin, and shouts of triumph from another tub. A wild-eyed girl had caught him with a towel. “We’re winning, George, we’re winning. You’ll be last.”
Howls from the squirming eel with coal-black hands.
“Rub harder, Mr. Ogilvie. George hates to lose.”
The cool voice murmured in his ear, the shoulder touching. Turning his streaming face he saw the smile, amused and mocking, reveling in his pain. Tom Taylor could look elsewhere with his wily schemes, the Agency in Savile Row go bankrupt, bust; William Ogilvie had had enough.
“I’m damned if I’ll play nursemaid. Rub him yourself.”
She seized the little brute from his useless hands and smothered its head in a towel to stifle the screams. While he stood dripping, flushed and angry, she said, “Idiot! What made you call at five, and on a Wednesday too? These boys will stay to dinner, then they’ll go. Come back at ten o’clock and I’ll be alone.”
Slowly he dried his face, his soaking cravat. He reached for his coat, streaky with splashed water, then looked down upon her, kneeling on the floor, coaxing endearments to her struggling son.
He said, “I shan’t forgive you for ten minutes of acute distress. I’m drenched to the skin, and I loathe children anyway. What do I get if I come back tonight?”
She straightened her back, shaking a damp curl from her eye, and answered: “Sam—or the pirate’s drapeau, take your choice.”
He stalked downstairs, deafened by children’s cries, and picked up his hat and cane. The bulldog snarled. Sam Carter, footman, discarded playmate to Captain Sutton of the Grenadiers, opened the door for him and bowed farewell. At the drawing-room window Mrs. Farquhar waved. It was exactly four and a half hours to ten o’clock. By then the curtains would be drawn and the candles lit, shaded, no doubt, and dim, the drawing room screened. The mistress of the house would be alone and waiting. A pity his call must be a business one, but there it was, and anyway a partnership, if partners they were to be, precluded intimacy. A step in the wrong direction would be fatal. So, all things considered… He strolled towards Russell Square.
When he returned at ten the house was shuttered, but a glance at the drawing room windows showed a light. Yes, she was right about the white front door drawing the eyesight like a magnet; it had the attraction of a blind man’s cane. He rang and knocked with confidence.
This time a serving maid opened the door, squat and round, her features almost hidden by a mobcap big as a mushroom. No Sammy Carter.
“Good evening. Where’s the footman?”
“He goes to bed at nine. The mistress says he’s still a growing boy and needs his sleep. I always listen for the bell at night.”
“Your mistress is very thoughtful.”
This time no bulldog, and no other hats. The hall was in darkness save for a single lamp.
“And what’s your name?”
“Martha, sir. I’m housekeeper by rights. They call me Mrs. Favoury in the kitchen.”
“Quite right too. It shows respect. Shall I go up?”
“Please, sir. You’ll find the mistress in the drawing room. She said you’d let yourself out, later on.”
All well arranged, no doubt. An evening ritual—the caller to the first floor, Martha to the basement. What did Martha make of it all? he wondered.
“Are you on duty like this every night?”
“Oh no, sir. Only when a stranger like yourself’s expected. Mr. Dowler, Mr. Burton and his Lordship all have keys.”
Did they, by Jove! What if all three arrived together? Then there’d be confusion, to say the least, and possibly bloodshed. No doubt she had it taped and knew their movements. The mobcap vanished. He climbed the polished stair and thought he heard, behind the closed drawing-room doors, a woman humming. He knew the song—the rage hit at Vauxhall. All London was singing it this spring:
“Tomorrow’s a Cheat, Let’s be merry today.”
It sounded better here than at Vauxhall. Humming was a pleasing pastime, soothing, after a busy day, to a hard-worked man in need of relaxation. Oh yes, she’d do the job he had in mind, and hold it too. Laughter, though! Did she laugh when she was alone? A cough, a manly cough. Now, what was brewing? Frowning, he knocked firmly on the door. There was a sort of scuffle, a whisper, padding footsteps. The door of the back drawing room closed and then her voice rang out, clear and unperturbed, “Won’t you come in, Mr. Ogilvie?”
He entered and looked about him. No one there except themselves. The scene was set just as he had pictured it: the lighting dim, discreet, the mistress of the house upon a sofa, in negligee, backed by a heap of cushions.
“Someone was with you?”
There was suspicion in his voice, and accusation. Eavesdropping was a game he much disliked, unless indulged in by himself, a master at it.
She looked up and smiled. She threw aside the buffer polisher with which she had shone her nails, and held out her hand for him to kiss.
“No one but Charley. That’s my brother. I’ve sent him off to bed, he knows his place.” She patted a spot beside her on the sofa.
Suspicious still, he glanced over his shoulder. “Are all your family under this one roof?”
“Yes, but they won’t disturb us. I told you we were clannish. It’s our Scottish blood; a kind of homing instinct keeps us together.”
He looked at her closely. Complexion very good, neck and shoulders shown to advantage in this lace affair. Twenty-six or twenty-seven, old Taylor had said, and married to a drunk for near nine years. She must have had guts, standing it that long.
“Look here,” he said, “I’m going to be very plain. I’ve come here for a business talk. No more.”
“Thank God for that. I spent last night at Ramsgate.”
“Lord Barrymore?”
“Yes, do you know him? Such a dear, but oh! so hearty. Leaves me blue with bruises, and always on the left hip, Lord knows why. Do you want anything to drink? What about brandy?”
“Thank you.”
Now she knew the form she changed position, sat up a little straighter, clasped her knees. She threw aside the languor and looked alert.
“Well, begin,” she said. “I’m all attention.”
He filled the brandy glass and sat beside her.
“How long have you been living here?”
“A year.”
“Doing well?”
“Not badly, but it’s chancy.”
“Anything put aside?”
“Good heavens, no. I live from day to day, as most of us do. I have no rent to pay, which saves my bacon.”
“No regular sum from Burton?”
“Don’t be absurd. James is a Scot. I’m lucky to get the house.”
“What about his Lordship?”
“Cripplegate gives presents, mostly diamonds. The trouble is, I like to wear them, not put them into pawn. The chaps don’t realize that it’s cash we need, all ready to the hand, to pay the butcher.”
He nodded. “It’s the same in any business. Credit, as much as you like, but cash tomorrow. Who else is steady?”
S
he hesitated. “You wouldn’t know Bill Dowler. A very devoted friend, but depends on his father. He’s just lost a packet on ’Change, with this talk of war. I won’t bleed a man I love, it isn’t honest.”
Ogilvie sipped his brandy, crossed his legs and flicked the minutest thread from his white silk stocking.
“I take it you pose as a widow?”
“Who told you I wasn’t?”
“Tom Taylor. I’d better be frank. It was he who prompted this visit. We work closely together—it’s only a step across Bond Street to Savile Row. Half the clients who go through his hands he passes to me: any young officers wanting promotion, lieutenants, captains, majors, colonels, I know the right strings, when to pull them and whom to approach.”
She reached for a cushion and settled it against her side. Then she stretched for the buffer once again and flicked it back and forth over her fingernails. “If Pitt gets his way and we’re plunged into war, then you’ll be in clover?”
“In theory, Mrs. Clarke, but not in practice. Too many of us in the game these days, and Greenwood and Cox are squeezing us out of business. They have the Household Troops, Dragoons, and half the regiments of the line. Small firms, like my own, don’t get a chance. War or no, it’s only a matter of time before I’m bust—that is, officially. My aim is to work behind the scenes, in private. Which is where you come in.”
She glanced at her polished nails, then up at him.
“But how?”
“By certain influence.” His voice was abrupt; he had no intention of giving much away.
“You mean, give little dinners to my Army friends? And tell them, ‘Buy promotion from Will Ogilvie, he’ll offer a cut price, and see you through’? They wouldn’t listen. Besides, I don’t know many Army men. A few nice boys come here to play, that’s all. And one old footling general, who should have been superseded years ago. Calls himself Clavering.”
Ogilvie shook his head and put down his glass.
“Oh, I know Clavering. He’s no use. No, Mrs. Clarke, that’s not what I mean at all. The fountainhead is what we want for this.”
“The Wellesley brothers? Don’t be ridiculous. They’re so stiff-backed they can’t remove their boots, let alone their breeches. No white front doors for them, they’d pass straight on to the chapel.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the Wellesley brothers.”
“I know Jack Elphinstone and Duncan Mackintosh, both colonels in the 60th, but what of that? No fountainheads for them, they’re always hunting. I met old Amherst once, on Brighton beach. He used to be C.-in-C. before the Duke of York. A driveling old dotard, nearly eighty. It’s no use, Mr. Ogilvie, you must find someone else to help the falling fortunes of your firm. Now, had it been the Navy…”
She looked reflective. The First Sea Lord had made an offer once, then lost his nerve, and fled to Portsmouth.
Ogilvie smiled. Odd that she hadn’t twigged. She’d mentioned the very name, and it hadn’t clicked. He’d best leave finalities to Taylor.
“Listen, Mrs. Clarke. If we found the man—and when I say ‘we’ I refer to you, Tom Taylor and myself—and got him snared; in other words, if this man, whom I needn’t name, fell for you good and proper, would you play?”
“But play at what?”
“Go shares in what you earned. And you would earn plenty. That is, if you learned the elementary rules, all of which I could teach you in a very few weeks.”
She stared at him, eyebrows raised.
“And what could you teach me that I don’t know now? Are you such an expert? You intrigue me.”
He shook his head impatiently. “I’m not referring to your own profession, ma’am. In that you hold every trick, I well believe. I meant, I would instruct you in the rudiments of mine: Army lore, not love.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Become an office boy, you mean? Oh yes, I could do that. I enjoy men’s shop, I always have done, since a child. Political, medical, hack writing, what-you-please. And if it brought me money into the bargain, so much the better. I have three children, as you know, to keep, and the rest of my family besides. Which reminds me, my brother needs a job. How about making him an office boy as well?”
“Excellent. ‘Routine’ work for him, finesse for you. But you do understand, Mrs. Clarke, if this goes through—this plan of mine—it may mean leaving here? Almost certainly will.”
She sat up straight, horror in her eyes.
“My lovely house? But it’s all so comfortable, with everything to my taste, and I’ve built a connection.”
“If we get our man, Mrs. Clarke, you won’t need your connection. He’ll give you a house three times the size of this. Goodbye to Burton, Barrymore and the rest. Small fry, the lot of them.”
Now he had her on the end of a line. The blue eyes narrowed, widened. He could see her busy mind leaping through the peerage to the premier dukes; but she still hadn’t hit the nail upon the head.
“If you mean real security,” she said, and she spoke slowly now, choosing her words, “there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to achieve just that. You met my mother, Mr. Ogilvie, this afternoon. Trembling, nervous, old before her time. Left by two husbands, no one to protect her. Luck was on my side or we’d have starved. I won’t end like that. Nor will my children. I had a son who died… I made a vow. I’ll play any game in the world that a woman can; if it’s sordid, or dirty, or mean, I don’t give a damn. But by God, that little boy you put in a tub tonight, bawling his head off, and his sisters too, they must grow up secure, they must be safe. Whatever I’ve done in the past, or shall do in the future, will be for them; and heaven help any man who lets me down.”
She got up from the sofa and walked across the room. The smile had gone from her face. She pulled the curtain, stared out of the window at the falling rain. Was he dismissed? He put down his glass of brandy.
“You can trust me,” he said. “I’ll be a friend. My life hasn’t been easy, neither has yours. Both born in this city of London, weren’t we? Right! Then we’ve got the same sort of wits, the same sort of brain. And here, right under our nose, is a certain class, a certain stratum, known as the ‘Upper Ten.’ Inherited wealth, idle, useless, and vain. You’ve had some of the pickings, so have I. Well… let’s go in for a rather larger share. And here’s luck to your children.”
He finished his brandy and kissed her hand.
“And what do you want me to do now?” she said.
“Call on Tom Taylor. Bond Street. Number 9.”
“I know the address. I’ve never been there yet. I hoped somehow to avoid it, I don’t know why.”
“I understand the feeling. Let it go. You won’t regret the visit, I’m sure of that.”
He moved towards the door. She stood and watched him.
“What time? Which day?”
“Friday. At eight o’clock. The evening, naturally. We’ll send a carriage for you.”
“Will you be there?”
“No. Taylor will. He’ll be watching from the window—you won’t have to wait. And by the way, pack a small bag, in case…”
“In case of what?”
“You might be asked to spend a few nights out of town.”
She frowned, then smiled, laughed and opened the door.
“You make me feel like a child before factory work. Shawl, and clogs, and dinner, all wrapped in a hankie. When I was thirteen, Mr. Ogilvie, my stepfather fell sick. He was corrector to the press, and I corrected the copy for him and took it down to the overseer, and pretended it was my father’s. He never guessed the truth for three whole weeks. I did my first job well. It wasn’t skimped.”
“I bet it wasn’t. Nor will this be, either. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
She watched him cross the street and waved her hand. She put back his brandy glass upon the tray, patted the cushions and blew the candles out. She went upstairs to bed, but didn’t sleep. Another turning point had come, but there was no Joseph snoring on the floor to for
ce her hand. No Edward, silent forever, in his cot. No Bill to cling to, weeping, on the pillow. Charley, upstairs, was too young and ignorant.
“My God,” she thought, “a woman can be lonely, when she’s the one to earn the daily bread. Men never count the cost. They’re used to it.”
Friday came. A day like any other, with things to see to. Some tradesmen in the morning, bringing bills and put off with an excuse. Meals ordered with Martha. The doctor to her mother’s rheumatism. Shopping with Isobel who needed stockings and gloves. Dinner at six with the children, as a treat. George rather fretful, sickening for something… If so? “It’s nothing, ma’am,” said Martha. “Too many apples.”
Charley at a loose end, wanting money. “Some fellow’s asked me to play tennis. Can I?”
“Of course you can. Don’t be so helpless, darling.”
The house was settled, then, at last. Her packing was done, a dark cloak covering her evening gown. The carriage stood at the door, Sam Carter waiting. And suddenly, for no reason, a nerve pain tautened in the belly.
“Sammy, wish me luck.”
“What for, ma’am? Where are you going?”
“That’s just what I don’t know. But wish it, Sammy.”
“Yes, ma’am. I always will.”
“Then shut the door. Tell the man Bond Street, number 9.”
It was dark in the streets, a night in early April. Spring was somewhere round the corner, but late as always. There was a party in Hanover Square, with carriages stopping. She wished hers could be among them, gay and friendly, not streaking to an unknown rendezvous. She remembered the hackney carriage, and Islington, and Mr. Day in his bobbled nightcap outside her door. Eleven years since then, and so many bridges… The carriage drew up in Bond Street. She muffled herself in her cloak. A light shone at a first-floor window—uncle Tom, furtive, peeping, leering, all agog. Oh well, it was too late to turn; the die was cast. The street lamp, murky, showed letters above the shop, “Taylor. Shoemaker”; and the coat of arms, “By Royal Appointment,” made the firm’s status clear. The ambassador of Morocco believed in the double entendre.
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