by Tim Jeal
Having written these letters, Goodchild had visited his secretary in the steward’s office to ask whether he had heard any news of the riot from any other sources. He had not; but before Goodchild could leave the room, the man had requested his master’s signature to a cheque for almost five hundred pounds made out in favour of a London dressmaker, Lord Goodchild, within his limited capacity for such things, had been attempting to reduce his own expenditure during the past year and this bill, announcing so clearly that his wife had not done likewise, following so hard on the heels of the morning’s other unwelcome news, had sent his lordship hurrying across the rotunda cursing under his breath.
He was about to open the door of the morning room, where he expected to find Lady Goodchild, when a footman came up behind him and begged to inform his lordship that a Mr Strickland was asking to see him. Goodchild, who had forgotten that the painter existed and had in any case intended his wife to interview the man, snapped out: ‘He must wait,’ and threw open the morning room door.
As he entered, he saw Helen Goodchild’s reflection in the pier-glass between the tall windows. She was sitting reading near the fire; her face protected from the direct heat of the flames by an oval fire-screen. In his agitated frame of mind the peace and stillness of the room irritated Goodchild.
‘My dear, not gone yet?’ murmured his wife, laying aside her book and smiling at him with a mixture of concern and covert amusement. ‘Surely the meet is not cancelled?’
To any outsider, seeing Helen’s brown questioning eyes and pale upturned face – redeemed from classic perfection by a sprinkling of faint freckles across the bridge of her nose – these questions would have seemed entirely innocent, but to Lord Goodchild they contained unpleasant traces of mockery.
‘And why pray might the meet be cancelled?’ he asked curtly.
Lady Goodchild shot him a surprised and reproachful glance.
‘A bad frost perhaps? The ground too hard for the scent to lie well?’ She gave a little shrug. ‘You’re the one who knows everything about such things.’ She raised a hand to her temple where a lock of auburn hair had escaped from the narrow bandeau of lace, serving as a cap. The studied grace and calmness of this movement made Goodchild grit his teeth. No worries for her about last night’s violence or the approaching election. He threw down his whip and moved closer to her.
‘I am asked to settle an account of yours to the tune of five hundred pounds. Is it in order, madam? I daresay you have looked it through?’
‘Do you look through tradesmen’s bills?’ she asked, as though surprised that he should be suggesting such an unfamiliar procedure.
‘I have recently made such matters my business,’ he muttered, stung by the irony of her tone, and reddening as he saw her nod understandingly and then raise the tips of her fingers to her lips as if to conceal a smile. But he detected no amusement a moment later when she said:
‘Am I reproved for dressing as your wife ought to dress? I have done so out of respect for your position, not from vanity.’
‘Position be damned. If you wore rags you’d still be my wife. Clothes don’t come into it.’
She stiffened and he saw a hard glint in her eyes.
‘You spend as much on pelisses for your troopers.’
‘It’s expected, Helen.’
‘And what may I expect?’ she asked after a sharp intake of breath.
‘If I may see the bill,’ he replied calmly, ‘I will tell you.’
Helen rose and moved towards the bell-pull by the marble mantelpiece.
‘Don’t ring. I would prefer you bring it yourself.’
‘Cooper does not read my letters,’ she replied with offended dignity. When she started towards the mantelpiece again, he moved in front of her. She flashed him a contemptuous look and turned on her heel. ‘Since you are clearly determined to be unreasonable, I will go for it.’
On her return, Goodchild took the thick white envelope and pulled out its contents, reading in silence for a while, then bursting out:
‘Fifteen guineas for a Honiton fichu. What in the name of all that’s reasonable is a fichu? A handkerchief, isn’t it? Must you pay that for a miserable scrap of lace?’
‘Large enough to cover the neck and shoulders, but no matter.’
‘A French cambric peignoir trimmed with Valenciennes: twenty guineas.’ The thick creamy paper shook in his hand. ‘Twenty guineas for the gown you wear when you have your hair dressed. It’s preposterous, incredible.’
She tossed back her head with apparent indifference to his remarks.
‘I wear it to breakfast. Should I be careless of my appearance at the only meal we take alone together?’
He laughed derisively and stabbed at the paper with a finger.
‘I see you’re not careless of your appearance when we’ve company either. Dinner dresses at sixty guineas. A manteau de cour, whatever that may be: forty guineas. Nice round figures these.’ He unfolded another sheet. ‘Great God, it’s endless…. Lined with ivory satin, trimmed with hand-worked embroidery of wild flowers on Brussels net.’ He flung down the pages and sank down onto a chaise-longue opposite the fire, resting his head in his hands.
He heard her come towards him and then felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her anger he could bear, but the sound of her pained voice enraged him.
‘Harry,’ she whispered, ‘how do you expect me to sympathise? Tell me honestly how much you spend on the hunt each year, how much on the stables? What economies have you made there?’
‘How can I turn away men who’ve worked for the family since I was a boy? To defray the stud’s expenses, I’ve as near as damn it sold out to the Braithwaites. Must I do more?’
‘Yet you bought a new mail-phaeton easily enough.’
He jumped to his feet, trembling with rage.
‘I am not quite a beggar yet.’ His awareness of the fact that by questioning her he had left himself open to similar criticism, did not diminish his sense of humiliation. She had turned away, as though implying that his behaviour was too gross to be witnessed.
‘You have every comfort in Manchester, people say,’ she said quietly.
‘I live no better than most of my officers when I am with the regiment.’
‘I have heard otherwise.’
‘Then you heard lies,’ he shouted, storming towards the door, but stopping short, realising that to leave now, just when Helen had hinted at knowledge of the Manchester villa he kept for entertaining his current mistress, would be playing into, her hands. In front of him, on the top of a lacquered Chinese cabinet, was an ivory chess set on a mother-of-pearl board. He picked up a knight and examined it with as much calmness as he could contrive, knowing that he had made himself absurd. Then replacing the piece, he looked at his wife and sighed. If only she could make herself more obliging and less critical; but it was always the same with women who thought too much. The intelligence and sharpness of tongue which had once attracted him, now had the opposite effect. Still beautiful at thirty-two – not even he could deny that – but to him it seemed a chill beauty in comparison with the opulent and more blatant charms of his Manchester doctor’s wife. When told of his troubles Dolly Carstairs would not blame him for bringing them on himself, as Helen had so often done, but would give him the comfort and sympathy he craved.
Goodchild did not want to return to the subject of the dress-maker’s bill, but, since he was determined not to leave meekly, as if cowed by his wife’s hints, and could think of no other grounds on which to attack her, he could see nothing for it. He had noticed that the morning dress she was wearing – a dark blue jacket bodice, edged with bands of lace converging at her slim waist – was not one he had seen before, and this gave him an idea.
‘Before you brand me a profligate,’ he said, ‘answer me this: what do you do with your fichus and fripperies?’
‘Wear them.’
‘How many times?’
‘As often as I please.’
‘Afterward
s. That’s what I meant. What then?’
She smiled easily.
‘I give them to Cooper or Dowson. Should I burn them?’
Goodchild glanced upwards at the delicate plaster medallions on the ceiling.
‘Your generosity is overwhelming. I’m sure your waiting-maid is the toast of the servants’ hall in a sixty guinea evening dress.’
‘She wears such things only when she is free to visit friends in Flixton or Rigton Bridge.’
‘There must be girls all over the county who would pay us for the privilege of Cooper’s place.’
Helen pursed her lips and made an impatient movement with her hands.
‘And does Rogers not wear your cast-offs, Harry?’
‘No valet of mine gets an item of clothing from me until it is well-worn.’
Helen bent down and handed her husband his whip.
‘I am keeping you from your sport.’ She paused and looked at him intently. ‘You know well enough what you must do to make me obliging.’
‘What pray?’
‘Withdraw your threat to sell Audley House.’
‘How can I?’ he snorted. ‘You know we cannot afford a London establishment.’
‘I care nothing for the establishment. Reduce the stables to a single carriage and pair, discharge as many servants as you please, close half the rooms, but keep the house.’ She fixed her eyes on his and moved closer. ‘I will not be left here while you are with the regiment or anywhere that pleases you.’
‘Not be left here?’ he cried. ‘Is this a hovel?’
‘You know my meaning.’ She treated him to a simpering society smile. ‘Who will call this afternoon, think you? Lady Markham to admire my ferns and pelargoniums? And will she talk about the plot of the latest three volume novel from Mudie’s? Mrs Halpin, I daresay, will bring her new piece of needlework, and, God help me, her dumpy daughter – the one who sings French songs. Remember? Afterwards will I take my drive in the barouche, reclining like some jaded dowager? Or drive myself in the park-phaeton? Such luxury of choice.’ She clasped her hands together and whispered: ‘For mercy’s sake, Harry. These people are nothing to me. You have your life, let me keep mine in Belgravia. Do not sell the house.’
He studied the figured veneers on the bureau-cabinet against the far wall and shook his head, still unable to face her.
‘I have no choice; none,’ he said brusquely, before turning and making for the nearest door, wishing fervently that he could have had the good sense to have controlled his immediate anger on seeing the bill. By now he might have been at the meet and this scene would not have occurred. He hurried through the dining room, into the billiard room and from there into the hall.
A groom was waiting on the gravel carriage sweep with the horse he would ride to the meet. His favourite hunter had been sent on ahead two hours earlier to be fresh for the hunt. He was a few yards from the glass door, when he heard a man’s voice:
‘Lord Goodchild?’
He spun round, irritated to be detained, and saw a young man in a brown frock coat with long curling hair getting up from an uncomfortable ‘Grecian’ stool in the apse facing the door.
‘Who are you, sir?’
‘My name is Strickland, my lord. I’m here to see you, Mr Braithwaite most kindly….’
‘Why are you waiting here?’
‘I have your secretary’s letter saying …’
‘No, no, I meant you should have been shown to an ante-room. Well, no matter.’
Lord Goodchild shook his head at the discourtesy of his servants and opened the door. The young man stepped forward and began firmly:
‘The letter says most definitely that …’
‘Very likely, but I can’t help that.’ Goodchild slapped his whip against his thigh and then smiled, as though he had hit on a solution that would be ideal for both of them. ‘Today week. Yes. Come today week at the same time. I’ll see you then. Good day.’
Without waiting for any further objection he went out and hurried down the steps, seeing the groom run forward to hold his stirrup. Moments later he was in the saddle and the groom clambering up onto his own mount. Tom Strickland watched the two men cantering down the drive and bit his lips. His face was white with anger and disappointment. Tom blinked furiously, mortified to feel his eyes filling. After waiting hopefully for almost an hour, so sudden and contemptuous a dismissal had shocked and stung him almost with the pain of a physical lash across the face.
Hearing a low cough to his left, he looked up from the black and white marble floor and saw the splendid footman who had first let him in and asked him to wait. The man’s white cravat and silver-corded tail-coat offended him less than his air of supercilious civility. The thought that this silent functionary had probably witnessed his humiliation sent the blood racing to Tom’s cheeks. The footman was looking at him with an expectant expression – his formal subserviency, Tom suspected, disguising definite satisfaction at what had taken place, confirming that not only those in livery did Lord Goodchild’s bidding.
Tom advanced on him with a positive tread and said loudly:
‘Tell Lady Goodchild that Mr Strickland wishes to speak with her about her portrait.’ The man favoured him with a low bow. ‘And say that he waited for his lordship to no purpose, and had his lordship’s letter promising an interview.’
Helen Goodchild, who had been in no pleasant temper after her husband’s departure, had not hesitated to refuse to see Joseph Braithwaite’s artist – a decision which her conviction that Joseph was to blame for many of her husband’s troubles made still less surprising. Her manner had been so peremptory that she was genuinely astonished to see the same footman return ten minutes later with the perplexing information that Mr Strickland had no other pressing appointments and would gladly wait until her ladyship might find a convenient moment to see him.
Short of having this persistent person ejected, a course which Helen did not consider, she knew that she would have to receive him. After all his request to see her was not unreasonable; he had come by appointment. Her mind made up, Helen decided to summon him to the Red Drawing Room, a far more formidable setting than the morning room in which she had exchanged words with her husband. She was not concerned to impress this stranger, but was determined that he should relay to Joseph Braithwaite an account of the interview which would discomfort the manufacturer. To receive Joseph’s protégé in style, and then to refuse his services with exquisite courtesy, would give her the double satisfaction of offending Braithwaite and distressing her husband, whose dearest wish seemed to be to avoid differences with his benefactor. Having been born into a far humbler family than her husband’s, Helen felt the indignity of their indebtedness to the nouveau riche Braithwaites far more keenly than Harry himself appeared to do.
The Red Drawing Room – ‘red’ because its walls were lined with faded crimson Spitalfields’ silk – was not only the largest reception room in the house but also, with its gilded Empire furniture, boulle cabinets, Aubusson carpet and glittering Waterford chandeliers, the most imposing. Four windows, almost reaching the rococo ceiling, were separated from each other by identical marble-topped console tables, supporting tall mirrors in frames decorated with gilded acanthus leaves. But the room’s principal glory was not the furniture, nor even the Sèvres, but the pictures, for these included a Magdalene by Titian, Rembrandt’s Head of a Jew‚ a group of classical figures by Poussin, and Canaletto’s Market place at Padua.
When Mr Strickland was announced and entered, holding his hat nervously in his hands, Helen glanced briefly at him and motioned him to be seated on a small upright chair next to an elegant card table near the centre of the room. His appearance gave her a shock which she was careful to conceal. She had somehow expected any artist employed by the Braithwaites to be of stolid and workmanlike mien, but here was a young man whose pale sensitive face and dark eyes would certainly fulfil any impressionable young lady’s ideal of what a romantic poet ought to look like. Without ra
ising her eyes from the carpet, Helen asked pleasantly:
‘Tell me, Mr Strickland, how Mr Braithwaite came to give you the privilege of immortalising him?’
‘He saw some work of mine.’
‘Where?’
‘The Theatre Royal in Manchester.’
‘Pictures in a theatre, Mr Strickland?’
Helen noticed that he seemed embarrassed and decided to devote more conversational attention to Joseph Braithwaite.
‘I painted the frieze over the proscenium arch, my lady. The choice of subject was provided. Shakespeare enthroned between two elephantine figures of Tragedy and Comedy.’
He had spoken in such a matter-of-fact way that Helen could not decide whether he was being ironic; perhaps he disliked painting murals.
‘Need they have been … elephantine?’ she asked quietly.
‘The theatre manager has a fondness for draperies.’
‘A taste evidently shared by Mr Braithwaite.’ Helen could not help smiling. ‘Perhaps you are painting him in a toga?’
Because of his previous seriousness, Helen was surprised when Strickland laughed.
‘He has enough draperies in his library. I painted three panels for him there: Truth, Temperance and Humility all in billowing folds.’
‘Is Mr Braithwaite’s portrait to be part of this sequence of virtues? Representing Thrift perhaps?’ She had said this with no trace of amusement and was impressed when the artist replied in the same manner.
‘These are female figures, my lady. Mr Braithwaite would feel out of place. His will be a plain portrait.’
She could guess from the movements of his hands as he held his hat on his knee that Strickland was nervous, but his answers had surprised her as much as his appearance had done. Nervous and yet assured: a strange combination. It occurred to her that unless she could lead him into making the gauche and boorish remarks she had expected, she would find it hard to send him away empty handed.