‘How will the household treat Jem, if he stays as your guest?’ she asked seriously, setting aside her stitching and peering over the spectacles she had but recently affected.
‘With luck, since London will be exceeding thin of company at this time of year, my parents will have left at most a skeleton staff, none of whom will recognise him. Heaven forefend that my father decide to visit the capital – he is so high in the instep that the presence of his groom’s son in the best guest chamber might drive him into an apoplexy.’ I laughed, not entirely sure that I was joking.
‘Perhaps he would not recognise him. Now, Tobias, you will take this for your expenses. I know you will be paying your curate more than generously, and that your stipend is mostly spent on the parish. When did you last collect your tithes?’ she asked, raising an imperious hand. ‘Quite so. So – since this errand is entirely on my behalf – you will accept what I offer. You may keep a strict account if it suits you. And you will make me a solemn promise: the moment it is safe for you to shed your disguise you will purchase for me every new book you can carry. If I am to spend the winter with…if I am to spend the winter here, then I must be entertained.’
‘Surely the family will decamp soon,’ I said.
‘The longer they stay here, the more the threatened legal case to declare my dear Hugo dead can be postponed. There is talk of my bearing the expense of my great-nieces’ coming out. If I must, then I must inculcate some manners and conduct in them.’
‘So they will stay with you till they have sucked you dry and then initiate action,’ I said angrily.
‘Not if you find Hugo first,’ she said. Standing, she gave me her hand to kiss. ‘God bless you in this noble endeavour, my dear Tobias.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We arrived to find, as we had expected at this time of year, that most of the Berkeley Square house was shut up, with the bulk of the servants in Derbyshire to supplement the usual staff. My father and his cronies would be up there for the shooting I had once thought so important, and their wives would be chattering the sort of vacuous insipidities that drove my mother mad.
There was a long delay between my ringing the bell and the slow opening of the front door. Mitten, the butler, and his team of footmen were obviously in the north, and it was Mrs Tilbury, the housekeeper, who welcomed us. Indeed, her first welcome was hesitant, even reluctant.
‘Mrs Tilbury? Tilly? Surely you remember me?’ I said, taking her poor gnarled hands and kissing them.
‘Master Toby, is that really you? Oh, behave yourself, do,’ she added, as I gave her a child’s embrace.
Thereupon she fell on me as if I were the Prodigal Son indeed, swearing I had not changed by so much as a whisker since she last saw me. However, her screwed-up eyes and need to hold her face within inches of my own told its own story, and Jem – in his guise as the Reverend James Yeomans – was spared more than a cursory inspection. For several years now my mother had wished to pension her off, but the poor woman clung to the idea that she was still essential to the running of the household. Soon, my father insisted, Mama would have to find some way of – in his terms – putting her out to grass, before she fell down the grand staircase and broke her neck.
‘You’ll have to take us as you find us, Master Toby,’ she declared, gesturing at the Holland covers in the Green Salon. ‘Alterations,’ she added in a stage whisper. ‘One of those closets. I tell a lie. Four of those closets. And a proper bathroom for her ladyship, he said, though improper’s the word I’d use, and another for himself.’
‘Bramah water closets?’ I asked
‘Yes, indeed. But there’s no need for you to worry, Master Toby – there’s no call for decent folk to strip themselves off in some great empty room, not when they can have a hip bath in front of their bedroom fire. So just you tell your valet that.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ I said gently, ‘now that I am a man of the cloth I have no valet, and neither does my friend, Mr Yeomans, here. We make but a short stay, Tilly.’
‘I’ll have a fire set in your room this instant, Master Toby, and one in the best guest chamber. Young Wilfred’s a decent, hard-working lad – he’ll look after your needs. But a rare lot of noise those builders make, Master Toby.’
‘I doubt if we’ll be spending much time here, Tilly. Cook will be up in Derbyshire, will she not?’
‘Aye, and Pierre, the chef your father’s had set on.’
‘So we’ll dine at my club.’
There were two reactions. Beside me Jem tensed and Mrs Tilbury’s face fell.
‘But first we will come down to your room,’ I said quickly, ‘and you will pour us a glass of wine and tell us all your news. How is Mitten’s back? And is there news of his son – the one in the navy?’
In fact, since neither of us had brought evening dress, we repaired not to Boodle’s but to Brown’s Hotel for our supper. No one looked twice at two respectable clergymen dining there, and we partook of an excellent meal.
Jem threw himself into his new role, only after a glass of Burgundy dropping his voice and admitting that he found, after the stillness of the country, the noise and bustle of the city no longer to his taste.
‘You echo my very sentiments,’ I said. ‘But it is the squalor and the stench of the streets that I found most distressing. To be poor in the country must be bad enough, but here, with no kind landlord to help in times of hunger! To think I once considered that London was the only place to live. But you will be finding far worse tomorrow, Jem – James – when you make your way to the east of the city.’
He nodded. ‘Toby, I’ve been considering…’ He paused as the waiter removed our soup plates. ‘If I’m to be a poor clergyman, I can’t be living in Berkeley Square, not even as a guest. I have to be living amongst the people from whom I hope to obtain information.’
‘You are right, of course. As it happens, the same thought had occurred to me. But where you live must be as respectable as it is poor, and not for anything would I have you sleeping in some infested rooming house while I enjoy the luxury – not to mention the new water-closets – of my home. I write occasionally to a man who was up at Cambridge at the same time as I. He too was subsequently ordained, but was not as fortunate as I in obtaining a generous patron.’
‘Generous indeed,’ Jem observed, with a twisted smile, as he and I both considered the fate of that lady.
‘Touché. But Charles Frane is curate in Southwark – the vicar in charge holds several benefices and makes sure that he serves only the most fashionable.’
‘Which Southwark is not.’
‘Exactly so. Charles and his wife have not been blessed with issue, as yet, so they have room to spare and I am sure that they will be more than happy to earn a few pence by offering you board and lodging.’
‘Well, Southwark is just the sort of place I would want to start displaying those bills you’ve had printed. Excellent, Toby. Yes, I’d be grateful if you would write to this Charles Frane to put the idea to him. And you – you’ll be going to Hanstown?’
‘Hans Crescent, to be precise. But not until you’re settled with Charles.’
‘Wearing these bands?’
‘Why not? That was what we agreed.’
‘But as for you – I wonder if you might not do better to act as the sort of out and outer Mr Vernon aspires to be. If Mr Chamberlain of Hans Crescent is a cit, he’d more likely to pull his forelock for that sort of man than for a clergyman.’
‘You may be right… I’m not dressed for the part, however.’
‘Don’t tell me your old valet – what was his name, now? Held his nose far higher than you ever did!’
‘So I should hope. A valet aspiring to the heights can’t admit to serving a lowly divinity student. Cumberbatch. Can you imagine his face if he saw the rectory? Anyway, what about him?’
‘He may have been toplofty, but I wager he did his job properly, and that all your clothes have been properly stored against your return.’
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‘But they’ll be three years out of fashion. Though I suppose that’s all the better – country clothes always takes a while to catch up with London modes.’
‘Exactly. You may smell of camphor, but at least you’ll look the part of a country gentleman.’
‘So that’s settled. I’ll try it.’ I waited for the waiter to remove the cover and offer us brandy. ‘No, Jem, I propose that tomorrow we enjoy ourselves – in a modest way, befitting two men of the cloth, but enjoy ourselves nonetheless.’
It was only right that we should visit Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s. I was glad I had suggested that we do them in that order, Jem uneasily suggesting that the former was too crowded with memorials to rich people to be truly the House of God. St Paul’s was much more to his taste, despite a hackney carriage journey during which the jarvey so unmercifully whipped his horse that I feared Jem would if needs be engage in fisticuffs to restrain him. However, the fury in his eye was sufficient to quell the villain. Once within, he raised his eyes to the glories of the dome, and knelt in prayer beside me as to the manner born. I believe his prayers for the success of our venture were as devout as mine, and his demeanour certainly did not want for reverence as we explored the rest of the awe-inspiring building.
* * *
Knowing that for several days afterwards there could be no thought of pleasure, for Jem at least, I privately asked young Wilfred to obtain tickets to the play that evening, and book a table afterwards at the Piazza. Remembering how well Jem acted in Shakespeare, it was natural to select something by the Bard. I only had to glance at Jem’s face during the performance – Othello – to know that I had made the right choice.
Since we were in town incognito and I was anxious lest such extravagance might offend him, I made no mention of our family box and we took our places with the groundlings. The audience was as well behaved as I had known, and the performance by all the actors one to stay in the memory forever. I might not miss the filth of the Metropolis, but I realised with a painful pang how much I missed some of the other things it had to offer.
As if stunned, Jem hardly spoke, even when I hoped to loosen his tongue by ordering champagne with our supper. Every time I made a gesture such as that I was on tenterhooks lest he feel patronised, lest the difference between our lots in life were to become unbearable. Perhaps they would, did he not know almost to the penny how much I lived on, how much I gave away, in my new, my real life in the village.
Though we had forbidden her or Wilfred to wait up, Mrs Tilbury had ensured that there was a bright fire in the Small Saloon when we returned, with brandy and port to hand. In truth, however, we were both weary after our day’s dissipations, and sat no longer than ten minutes, making our plans for the morrow. Charles Frane had responded promptly to my letter, assuring me that any friend of mine would be a friend of his, and only reluctantly accepting my offer of payment for his hospitality. However, his wife was now – and even as he wrote the words, his hand had trembled – was in an interesting condition, and he feared he must avail himself of a few shillings.
‘Can the Church be no more generous towards its clergy?’ Jem demanded.
‘It is very generous indeed to some of them,’ I said dryly. ‘At least the rector holding Charles’s benefice has bothered to introduce and pay for a curate. Others do not trouble even with that. Pray God that one day everyone will find pluralism as offensive as I do – if a man cannot look after the souls of all in his care, he has no right to call himself their shepherd, and absolutely no right to all the pecuniary advantages of his many parishes, no right to the tithes, the pretty vicarages, all the other privileges…’ I preached to the converted, of course.
But Jem raised a finger. ‘Pray continue, Toby. If I am to pass as a man of the cloth, I must needs be aware of all these controversies.’
Five minutes later, however, when I looked to him for agreement on some point, he was already asleep. It was nearly three in the morning, and both of us were used to country hours. Gently I removed the brandy glass from his grasp. He jerked back to consciousness.
Stretching apologetically and hauling himself to his feet, he smiled. ‘Thank you, Toby. This has truly been one of the best days of my life.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next morning, heavy-lidded but still basking in the recollection of the previous day’s holiday, Jem donned his garb as a poor parson, and in the clothes I had once worn every day I became truly the country justice of the peace. We looked each other up and down.
‘I’m afraid you look too strong and healthy, Jem. But we can’t remedy that.’
‘I’ll try to look hungry, shall I? And worried? But anyone living in the country will look healthier than these poor grey-skinned city souls. As for you, Toby, you need to strut a bit more. Think about that relative of yours that thinks he’s God Almighty: remember how high he holds his chin. Come, give that quizzing glass of yours a bit of exercise.’
Jem trying to look hangdog, and I sneering down my nose in the manner of my least favourite cousin, we summoned another stinking, but suitably anonymous, hack. It crossed London Bridge and lumbered through streets deep in ordure and rotting vegetables to take us to my friend Charles Frane’s home in Southwark. This was in sight of the cathedral, which rose above an ill-assorted mass of manufactories, breweries and timber-yards. The vicarage, but for an extensive but ill-maintained glebe, would have been almost swamped by the noisome tanneries and skin markets emitting their nauseating stench.
Despite the fine features and proud bearing that would have made him an excellent dean, Charles Frane cared for the souls attending not the historic cathedral, but the small and comparatively modern church of St Stephen the Martyr. Try as one might, one could not envisage this poor house of God remaining upright much longer. Damp was seeping up its walls, and the south transept clearly needed a buttress or two to support its outer wall. But that was as nothing compared with the state of Frane’s parishioners and their accommodation. Even the poorest of my flock would have found it in them to pity these wretched souls, who seemed to rely on gin to survive their brutally short lives and ease them into the blessed oblivion of death.
In the midst of this, Frane and his wife lived in a house perhaps fifty years old that was decent but little more. I was sure Mrs Frane, an anxious-looking woman in her later twenties, only achieved the neatness and no more than adequate cleanliness through constant toil. She was assisted by a slatternly cook, and a couple of girls who seemed scarce out of the nursery. How she would manage when her babe was born I knew not.
Then inspiration struck me. My mother had constantly entreated me to take up one of the benefices within her gift – tonight I could write to her urging her to offer one of them to the Franes. Perhaps it was possible for two strong young people to survive here, but no one should be condemned to raising a longed-for infant in such a place. I briefly contemplated the idea of inviting Frane to join me as a permanent curate, but that would mean I could not give as much as I wished to my flock – in material or spiritual terms.
While Mrs Frane prepared the nuncheon she would press upon us, we three men adjourned to what she hopefully referred to as the morning room. Presumably if the sun was ever brave enough to shine in this district it would illuminate the smoke-stained walls and scuffed woodwork.
I had of necessity explained to Frane something of our motives for both speed and secrecy, but had omitted to reveal that Jem was my groom. Nor had I confessed that he wore his bands as a disguise. Much as I preferred the truth at all times, it occurred to me that the second piece of information would be more palatable than the first, which I still withheld.
Frane received my admission with so little pleasure that I was glad I concealed the truth about Jem’s usual employment. In fact, his fine nostrils flared with indignation, a reaction that accorded ill with the japes that he had constantly played at Cambridge and that would probably have resulted in permanent rustication but for the intervention of a convenient
uncle who was an intimate of the college master.
‘Pretending to be in Holy Orders? Indeed I have never heard of such an outrage. Such a want of reverence, such… Every feeling is revolted.’
I bit my lip. Perhaps in his place I would have felt a similar revulsion. And how dared I condemn his spiritual volte face when I too had changed profoundly since our undergraduate days?
It was left to Jem to speak. ‘I am sorry that you disapprove,’ he said calmly, setting his understandably scarce-touched glass of sherry on a convenient but greasy table. ‘But you must know that sometimes it is necessary to balance two evils. To my mind the greater evil lies in letting a murderer go unpunished, and if, by spending a few days in the attire of a profession I admire and revere, I help achieve that end, then so it must be.’
Since he spoke with the calm and authority – indeed, the exact intonation – of Dr Hansard, it was unsurprising that Frane was slightly mollified.
‘Indeed,’ I added, ‘we believe that our own lives might be at risk, not to mention those of other good people, should our activities be known. Jem – James, I should say – will become a parson and I return to my old idle ways, as a man about town.’ I shot a smile at Jem to acknowledge his idea.
‘I cannot see why this double impersonation should be necessary,’ Frane insisted. ‘Campion is perfectly capable of asking any questions. He made a perfect nuisance of himself in tutorials at Cambridge doing precisely that.’
‘For one thing, Charles, I lack the common touch – and try as I might I cannot rid myself of my wretched Eton drawl.’
‘Furthermore, can you see Tobias defending himself in a fist fight?’
‘I understood he was taught his science by the great Cribb himself,’ Charles objected.
‘He was indeed, and has plenty of bottom. But he would fight fair. And by your leave, Mr Frane, I do not expect our still unknown adversary to fight that way. I would deal with him in any way necessary.’
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