A Catch of Consequence

by Diana Norman

  What Betty didn’t say—it was Joshua who told Makepeace—was that the hostility of the cook and her staff would have rendered even cleaning the floors miserable. ‘She said she di’n’t want Ma’s dirty black carcase in her kitchen.’

  Raging, Makepeace had set off but Betty pulled her back. ‘Leave it, gal. Sir Pip’s got troubles enough. Let’s bide our time, bide our time.’

  ‘All right, but they ain’t swilling like hogs while we’re biding. Those wasters are getting through more and better in a week than the taproom ate in a month. Look here, three dozen larks. You eaten a lark since we been here? I ain’t.’

  It wasn’t that Dapifer couldn’t afford it, but he was being robbed by his own people. Waste was something Makepeace couldn’t abide and this was brazen squander.

  At least she could put Betty in charge of victualling the household—and did. Butchers, grocers and wine merchants who had supplied the Dapifers for generations suddenly found their bills questioned. If the answers were not satisfactory, Betty, doing the round of the markets, found new tradesmen who were eager to supply Dapifer House at more competitive rates. Menus were studied and altered towards what was, both gastronomically and financially, a healthier regime.

  The new stringency led to a formidable deputation of protest consisting of Mrs Peplow and the cook, Mrs Francanelli, waving defiance and the new menus in the faces of Makepeace and Betty.

  ‘When His late Majesty visited unexpected in ‘fifty-nine,’ Mrs Francanelli declared, ‘I had the wherewithal to serve dinner as’d suit a emperor, squab à la soleil, moulded lamb, duck with a calf’s foot jelly shore . . . twenty dishes a course, finishin’ with my special fantasy, Transparent Puddin’ with Silver Webb—’

  ‘Famous, Mrs Francanelli’s fantasies are,’ Mrs Peplow interjected.

  ‘Ain’t they just,’ Makepeace said. The woman had been over-ordering and selling off the surplus. ‘Well, the new King ain’t calling, ladies, so get used to it.’

  ‘An’ we’re cuttin’ down on linen an’ all, Mrs Peplow,’ Betty said. ‘We got enough to bed England as it is.’ She made similar swathes in purchases of candles, soap, beeswax polish, charcoal, coal and hair powder that could have supplied a small country.

  Household frigidity increased but the bills went down.

  With Betty busily employed, Makepeace took on a personal maid—Catty Dapifer had taken hers with her. She promoted young Fanny Cobb from the scullery because she liked the look of her: she didn’t sneer. Dapifer had discovered the child begging on the streets and broken with tradition by giving her a place in the household where, though she suffered as an outsider, she did it on a full belly.

  Fanny’s two years in the scullery had given her no reason to feel loyalty for the rest of the staff but she had a great deal for her master and new mistress: much of Makepeace’s acquaintance with the corruption below stairs was supplied by Fanny. Her knowledge of toiletry was negligible but, by using her Cockney acumen and poring over illustrations in The Ladies’ Pocket Book, she began to hook her mistress into her clothes more or less correctly—it couldn’t be done by the wearer alone—and make a passable job of dressing her hair.

  ‘I’ll get better though,’ she said, ‘I’m pickin’ up hints on lady-maidin’ from Carmelita at Lady Judd’s.’

  Strangely, the only American who fitted a niche in Dapifer House was Tantaquidgeon. Blacks were common in London, Red Indians were not, and the servants, finding him alien and sinister, treated him with superstitious respect.

  He’d taken a liking to a wall-hanging embroidered with dragons in the Yellow dressing room and wore it in place of his blanket. In this, a pair of breeches, and smeared with a pomade Dapifer had given him to replace the bear’s grease, he’d begun to stand on the back of the carriage when Dapifer went out and about. Dapifer said he discouraged footpads.

  Soon there was to be an excursion to collect Lord Ffoulkes’s young son from school and take him to the Dapifers’ ancestral manor in Hertfordshire for the Christmas holidays. ‘I think you’ll like Hertfordshire,’ Dapifer said.

  Makepeace was prepared to, but would it like her? So far her English record was of servants who despised her and a female aristocracy that shunned her. She was ready to mother the orphaned little baron for whom her husband was now responsible, had looked forward to it—she got on well with small boys—but perhaps this child too would find her unacceptable.

  She had time to dwell on these depressing matters. There was no one to visit or be visited by. Dapifer was engaged in seeing his lawyer, assisting Lord Rockingham behind the scenes and finding friends for the repeal of the Stamp Act. With no work other than to check the accounts and make herself pretty, Makepeace found herself idle for the first time in her life.

  Every morning her shutters were opened and her curtains drawn by a maid, another brought her breakfast, Fanny helped her dress and did her hair. Any attempt to do these things for herself resulted in a look of disgust or reproach. If she attempted to poke the fire, a footman descended to snatch the poker from her hand and do it for her.

  The first Lady Dapifer’s card tables and harpsichord lay closed for lack of someone capable of playing on them, and a selection of novels Makepeace had no interest in reading remained on the otherwise sober shelves of the library. She wandered her beautiful house, envying the activity behind the door to the service quarters, her hands twitching for gainful occupation.

  She and Betty took to going for walks in Hyde Park with Josh. For one who had experienced the limitless forests of America, it was tempting to sneer at Londoners’ tendency to ascribe all the virtues of the great outdoors to these tamed sylvan acres. But the place was pretty and, indeed, once you’d passed the gallows at Tyburn, walked the avenue of walnut trees into Cumberland Gate and bypassed the Ring where the fashionable circulated in their carriages, the noise of town faded into birdsong and there were red deer beneath the trees.

  There was always something new to discover: a little wooden lodge of a Cake House where they bought cheesecake or a mince-pie and washed it down with a mug of milk warm from the cow. There were skiffs on the Serpentine and an engine house where horses turned the mill that pumped water to Chelsea.

  Once, in early morning, they were stopped from approaching too close to a clearing in an oak grove by a gentleman who told them there was a duel in progress. As they walked away, they heard shots. The wounded—if there were wounded—were carried away, unseen, in another direction.

  On another occasion they had to run out of the way of a four-in-hand, driven by a hatless man with a pretty female passenger, which came careering towards them across the grass. The woman’s shout floated back to them: ‘Faster, faster, Sidney. Make ’em jump.’ They’d heard the voice before.

  ‘That was her, wa’n’t it?’ asked Betty, brushing herself down. ‘She tryin’ to kill you?’

  But Makepeace was watching Catty Dapifer encourage her driver to veer his carriage towards another group of people in order to make them scatter. ‘She didn’t know it was me; she don’t care who she kills.’

  ‘Democratic, I’ll give her that.’

  Whether the poor needed a licence to trade in the park or whether they were merely unwelcome to richer Londoners, who regarded it as their preserve, Makepeace couldn’t tell. There was an elderly and malodorous woman who set up an apple stall every morning and who, with equal regularity, was ejected every afternoon, swearing loudly, when the park’s beadles made their rounds. Another thorn in the side of the beadles was the sellers of pamphlets and scandal sheets, but they were quicker than the old apple woman and usually collapsed their tables and ran for it at the first glimpse of authority in the distance.

  Makepeace was acquainted with political pamphlets—they’d been a powerful weapon in the hands of Sam Adams—but scandal sheets were new to her. She bought one, which seemed both political and scandalous, and carried it home to Dapifer. ‘Are they allowed to write this about Lord Bute and the Princess Dowager? ’Tis ve
ry rude.’

  He was working on some papers and laid down his pen to look at it. ‘Ah yes, the North Briton. An old copy. You should read issue number forty-five, which attacked the King for constantly acting on Bute’s advice—which he still does, incidentally. That was burned by the public hangman.’

  She avoided another harangue on the King and Lord Bute’s Tory politics which, according to her husband, belonged in the Stone Age; what she found shocking was the explicitness of the attack on Bute’s—and royalty’s—sexuality.

  ‘Yes, but him and the Princess Dowager. Do they . . . ?’

  ‘Probably not. Wilkes is an irreverent rake who enjoys stinging his opponents any way he can and writes most of his pieces while he’s in bed with a doxy. Oh, come on, Procrustes—even you must have heard of John Wilkes.’

  ‘ “Wilkes and Liberty”? That trouble the other day?’ There had been riots over the import of foreign silks that was ruining London weavers and the cry had been loud enough to reach even Dapifer House.

  ‘That’s the one. Actually Wilkes is in France, saying that the establishment is trying to kill him, but his name has become synonymous with protest against the Government.’

  ‘Are they trying to kill Wilkes?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past them. They’ve handled the matter like the dolts they are, issuing general warrants to arrest him, denouncing his bawdiness. . . Good God, they should look to their own debauchery. Our virtuous Earl of Halifax was the first one to prosecute Wilkes in ’sixty-three and he’s sired at least two children on his daughter’s governess . . .’

  The mention of general warrants did it; their use by the Customs and Excise in Boston had imprisoned too many of Makepeace’s friends among small traders. She was prepared to overlook a bit of bawdiness in a man if he was fighting general warrants. ‘Is he against the Stamp Tax?’

  ‘He is.’

  She left the room a Wilkes supporter.

  She thought, when they set out for Hyde Park the next morning, that she’d remember the day because it was the first occasion on which she wore one of Mme Angloss’s designs outdoors.

  She was to remember it, but not for that.

  It was a walking dress, almost a coat, of dark blue velvet with white linen peeping from deep, masculine revers and cuffs. As Mme Angloss had promised, the emphasis was less on the hips and more on the rear of the skirt that curved down in heavy folds from a nipped waist, its hem slightly higher at the front to display the enormous steel buckles on Makepeace’s shoes. The brim of her matching hat swept up daringly over one ear.

  Fashions in the park were still fussy, the only change of the season belonging to the head, where hair was rising like dough in an adornment of feathers and lace. The severity of her own ensemble, by comparison, would command attention. And deserves to, she thought, looking in the pier-glass.

  But as she and Betty went out of the front door, her nerve failed and she ran back inside to take up a thin, hooded cloak. ‘In case it rains,’ she apologized to Betty, who was in new, red brocade and had no intention of hiding it.

  They would have attracted attention today in any case because Tantaquidgeon, either fascinated by their splendour or, perhaps, sensing that it made them vulnerable, stalked after them and would not be sent back.

  It was a grey misty autumn day. A fine drizzle, while not sufficient to make them surrender their walk, was enough to excuse Makepeace’s use of her cloak.

  Even Tantaquidgeon attracted few stares as they went into Hyde Park today because their entrance coincided with the exit from it of the man with the umbrella. He was one of the sights of the West End, though they never discovered his name; he was just the Man with the Umbrella and provided value because he was invariably accompanied by a fascinated crowd which, deciding he must be a foreigner and therefore probably homosexual, minced along behind him. He had the moral courage not to abandon what Makepeace, who hadn’t seen an umbrella before either, thought a strange but sensible precaution against English weather.

  She and Betty hung on their heels to watch the entertainment as the man passed the hostile, fist-shaking coachmen and sedan chairmen waiting for custom in their Cumberland Gate rank. ‘Here, Froggy, can’t you take a bloody coach?’

  Betty shook her head in satisfaction. ‘London,’ she said.

  Passing the stall where she’d bought the North Briton the previous day, Makepeace looked on the young pamphlet-seller behind it more kindly. He was not a prepossessing object, being pasty-faced, slouched, badly dressed and scowling. However, she awarded him a we-Wilkesites-must-stick-together smile and moved on, without receiving one in return.

  There were fewer people about today. The season was drawing to a close and such as had them were preparing to leave for their estates in the country. Fallen leaves sent up the pleasing smell of damp earth as their feet kicked through them.

  They had reached the duelling grove when a grunt from Tantaquidgeon made them look behind.

  A figure was running towards them. It was hampered by a board under one arm and a sack in the other hand; in any case, it ran badly, its feet hitting the ground flat and without spring, as if unused to the exercise.

  ‘That paper fella, ain’t it?’ Betty said.

  It was—and frightened; this was not a man hastening to an appointment. As they watched, he dropped his table and ran on, still clutching the sack, still heading to where they stood among the oaks.

  And now they could hear the pursuit—‘ . . . in the name of the Law’—and just see through the mist the figures that were giving chase. Official figures, running faster than their quarry.

  It was Boston again, excise men after innocent smuggler. Makepeace’s hand had signalled the man to come in her direction before she could stop it. As one woman, she and Betty moved together, their backs close to one of the trees. She pulled Tantaquidgeon into line beside them; with his blanket, Betty’s girth and her skirt, they made a formidable screen. ‘Over here!’

  The young man looked behind him, calculated for a second, ran on for another, then doubled back, crouching, and hurled himself and his sack among the tree roots behind Makepeace like a rabbit into its burrow. Scared as he was, it was a sensible manoeuvre; with luck, mist and the shade of the oak branches, the pursuers might only have seen him keep to the main direction of his flight, not his return.

  Makepeace felt the back of her skirt lift; the man had crawled underneath it. She could feel him trembling against her stockings. Unpleasant, but she could do little about it now. ‘Keep still, blast you.’ She pushed back her cloak so that the excisemen could see the quality of her dress and hat.

  There were two of them. ‘Where’d he go, ma’am?’

  She pointed deeper into the grove. ‘That way.’

  ‘West Gate, Bill.’

  She shouted after them: ‘What’d he do?’

  ‘Libel.’

  Court bailiffs, then, not excise. But all the same. All against liberty. Satisfied with her blow for freedom, she waited until the sound of running feet had diminished to nothing, then moved forward and round in order to receive the young man’s tearful thanks.

  He wasn’t proffering any. Horrified, she saw that instead of crouching beneath her skirt he had crawled in face up. He still lay on his back, blinking. ‘Never saw a red quim before,’ he said.

  For a moment, she couldn’t think that she’d heard what she’d heard. He’d. . . Holy God, he’d looked up her petticoats. She’d saved him and all the time he’d been lying there, studying her private parts.

  ‘You dirty little shite-hawk.’ She kicked him in the side and he rolled over, whimpering. ‘You worm, you peeper.’ Kicked him again. ‘I’ll cut out your liver and cook it, I’ll teach you to insult a lady, I’ll lace your eyes on skewers, so I will, and make you chew ’em. Betty, call the bailiffs back.’

  Tantaquidgeon, seeing her anger, placed his moccasined foot on the young man’s none-too-clean neck.

  ‘Ow! Get that heaving great Huron off me.’r />
  Makepeace teetered in the act of kicking. ‘How’d you know he’s a Huron?’

  ‘He’s got the haircut. Right feather, too.’

  ‘All right, let him up.’ As the youth sat rubbing his neck, she asked: ‘You American?’

  ‘Nyah.’ He said it contemptuously, but he seemed to say everything with contempt. ‘Bigwigs ain’t got a monopoly on education.’ He got to his feet. ‘You are, though, from the sound of it.’

  ‘And a good job for you I am, you sneaking little turd. I saved your fat from frying, Hokey knows why. What’s your name?’

  ‘John Beasley. What’s yours?’

  ‘Cut off, John Beasley. I ever see you again, I’ll have you charged.’

  Betty had been picking up the sack and some of the papers that had spilled out of it. ‘Better see this first, girl.’

  Makepeace took the printed sheet. Its top half was devoted to a cartoon in which two crudely drawn women with enormous and elaborate headdresses were battling on the ground next to a street sign bearing the legend ‘Grosvenor Square’. One of the figures held a raised tomahawk with a banner streaming from her mouth reading: ‘He’s MY husband, Lady Dapifer.’ The other was saying: ‘Help! Help! MY husband, Lady Dapifer.’ A diminished male in the background wrung his hands.

  Below the drawing was an article which she was too appalled to read. Betty’s hand held a fistful of sheets, all of them the same. ‘Oh God. That’s me.’ This filth was being circulated, people would see it, laugh at it.

  ‘Is it?’ Beasley looked over her shoulder, interested. ‘You Lady Dapifer then?’

  ‘Who printed this?’

  ‘Me.’ He was proud of it. ‘My new paper, I’m calling it The Passenger. To be read on coaches and such. What d’you think?’

  ‘Who told you about this?’

  ‘Sorry. I can’t reveal my sources. It’s in the public domain anyway. If that’s you’—he put a long-nailed and grubby finger on the female with the tomahawk—‘she’s just started an action in the church courts against him for aggravated adultery. That’s bigamy in case you didn’t know.’