‘No,’ Burnes says. ‘No, this will be all. I shan’t be needing you again tonight, thank you.’ He has always been good with his men, and, as Charles takes the clothes brush to wipe away the flakes of scurf on the waistcoat, he grins at him. Charles nods, demurely, and finally helps Burnes on with his immaculately shining black coat.
4.
Half a mile away, the wicked old woman is descending, very carefully, a staircase. All that perfumes and silk and preservatives can do for her charms has been done, which is not much. Footmen stand around, upright as chessmen on the black and white marble floor, and she comes down the stairs, their bent little old mistress. As usual, the first arrivals have preceded her, and are now kicking their heels in the anteroom. Lady Woodcourt does not hurry on their account, nor does it occur to her to acknowledge them. She moves, a slow bent little old woman, down the stairs as if she would like an arm or a stick to keep her upright. Here, in her house, she seems a nervous little bird in a brilliant gold cage; everything so baby-blue and gold, every wall so hung with looking glasses to entertain its denizen with contemplation of herself. And, between the mirrors, still more representations of Lady Woodcourt. Three or four portraits of her at her peak. In one, she is a girl in her father’s grounds. The painter, long ago, saw something in her mind, and has her holding a whip and snaffle. Another is an embarrassing and improbable portrait of her in mythological guise, as – as – as (even Lady Woodcourt, guiding her guests round, has sometimes to pause and think and dredge her old mind) Minerva, the foolish-looking owl just escaping from her limp pale fingers. The third is her wedding portrait, and unwary callers have been known to inquire of each other who the little gentleman in brown could possibly be. That useful and patient Sir Bramley is still to be seen over the fire in his wife’s London house, clinging to her arm in fear and disbelief. What happened to him in life, no one quite knows. A very young man ventured once that he had been washed, and dissolved, being nothing, in the end, but varnish and ornament. Certainly it is difficult to believe in Sir Bramley as anything more substantial than his painted past self, but the remark got back, and the very young man was seen no more at Lady Woodcourt’s. In reality, it is thought, Sir Bramley lives in Italy for the sake of his health, and leaves Lady Woodcourt to the exercise of her influence and her many protectors.
No smooth-skinned oil-fresh Minerva now, she comes forward into the room and staggers into a chair. Almost at once, the blue-coated chessman at the door gives a start and calls out the names of the first skulking guests.
‘Colonel and Miss Garraway,’ he calls, blushing and gulping like the boy he is. In through the door pop the old Colonel and his pretty daughter. He, behind some perfect translucent ruby glaze, is a hopeless and declining old beau of hers, a useful stopgap who does no harm to anyone but himself; next to him, his daughter seems alarmingly alert and clean and young. Lady Woodcourt greets them without rising, her hand resting on a bijou gewgaw, a knobbled warty Chinese bronze pig. The girl, she is pleased to see, is as pretty as everyone says, as she follows her father’s abstracted bow with a gracefully embarrassed bob, scrutinizing with intense juvenile interest the finer details of the Aubusson, murmuring something which might have been ‘My lady’. A great improvement, all in all, on the Colonel’s late wife, who came into a room and waited for the company to rise and say how-de-do, as if she deserved nothing less. This girl, at least, would not laugh in your face and call you her dear Fanny.
Bella Garraway comes into the room, and her feet in their thin slippers are glad not to be kept waiting on marble any longer. It is her first time at the famous, the fascinating Lady Woodcourt’s; her papa has taken care not to alarm her, but all the same, she is wearing what diamonds Mama’s case has yielded up. Lady Woodcourt sits, smiling vaguely; a woman shrivelled and brown as an old apple, her filmy old eyes drifting perpetually away from the mark. Bella advances, and submits to Lady Woodcourt’s grip, a fierce clutch like the clasp of a purse. She just drinks her in; her thin body, her brown wrinkled flesh drifting loosely within the hard carapace of her boned gown like a boat at its moorings. Bella has no idea, in reality, who Fanny Woodcourt is. But Bella, as her sister and governesses always privately remark, is quick on the uptake, and her eyes run quickly over the room, assessing each gift, each bibelot with the commercial eye of an auctioneer. Each object, indeed, has its magnificent provenance, since Lady Woodcourt buys nothing for herself, and takes only from the grandest of her admirers. Anything Bella’s father ever gave her is surely in Lady Woodcourt’s dressing room by now, if not passed on to the housekeeper. Bella drops her eyes in modesty, but if she will not meet Lady Woodcourt’s gaze, she is at least curious enough to inspect her voluble possessions. Whether each porcelain treasure, each glittering glass is the gift of his Grace, Excellency, Majesty hardly matters. Bella looks around, assessing, and sees what Fanny Woodcourt has been.
‘My daughter, Lady Woodcourt,’ Colonel Garraway says, with all his opium-glazed gravity. Lady Woodcourt nods, so calmly that Bella unkindly wonders whether she, too, has been drinking from the phial of the ruby witch. She has learnt how to be suspicious of anything as innocent as composure or boredom in anyone much over the age of forty-five. They all do it, she suspects; and none of them discusses it in her hearing, ever.
‘I’m afraid you will find us all,’ Lady Woodcourt says, ‘a very dull old company tonight. Do sit down. I am quite mortified, my dear, to inflict such a, such a bundle of dry old sticks on you. I positively fear you may never come again, and that, that, that—’
‘That would never do,’ Colonel Garraway supplies gallantly, handing his daughter to a settle, and sitting down after her. Lady Woodcourt laughs brilliantly, a sound as if her glassy old bones have tumbled loose, all at once, and chimed together into a heap, somewhere inside her skin.
‘I’m sure it will be delightful,’ Bella says, inadequately.
‘Such a lot of dry old sticks,’ Lady Woodcourt says, with a touch of steel, not liking to be contradicted even in this mock-apology. She seems to believe her own polite disclaimer for a second, believing what she says as she says it, as all liars must, and a cloud passes over her brow. ‘Still – that wonderful young man – the explorer, who, who, who—’
‘The hero of Bokhara,’ Colonel Garraway adds, smiling. ‘Yes, that very wonderful young man.’
‘Bokhara,’ Lady Woodcourt sighs, relieved. ‘Now that is a place, I swear, not one person in a thousand had heard a jot or, or, or tittle of one year ago. And now we talk of it as readily as we talk of, of—’
‘Dorsetshire,’ Colonel Garraway says.
‘Of Dorsetshire,’ Lady Woodcourt continues. ‘My young friends talk of nothing else. I think one or two, they fancy taking a house in the better quarter of Bokhara for the winter. Now what do you think of that?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ Bella says, faintly alarmed as Lady Woodcourt spectacularly tinkles away.
‘All stuff and nonsense, of course, and I don’t believe any one of them could point to the wretched place on the map. Still, we talk of nothing else, I find, and all down to this singular, ah, fascinating, ah, ah, remarkable young man, all—’
‘Captain Burnes,’ Bella interjects.
‘Indeed. Thank you, my dear,’ Lady Woodcourt says, looking genuinely as if no one has ever done her a greater favour. ‘And now, who is this—’
‘M. le Duc de Neaud,’ the footman calls, or rather attempts, since what he announces is the Duck de Nod. ‘And,’ as a little woman in a snuff-coloured dress scurries in after her diminutive husband, ‘Mme la Duchesse.’
Everyone rises with an audible relief.
‘Delighted – charmed – delighted – quite on time – feared to be early – my dear Fanny – my dear—’ the Duchesse de Neaud spills over. She is English, a chatterbox, resented by no one, welcome everywhere, if she does not come first or leave last. The Duc limits himself to a quick bow and a scowl. He came over after the Revolution and, penniless, married one of t
hose spinsters who attended the old Queen Charlotte, to everyone’s surprise, including hers; her future had seemed to be mapped out in the series of faintly dictatorial books for children she wrote in dull afternoons at Windsor. She turns from Lady Woodcourt to Bella. ‘My dear – my dear—’
Colonel Garraway snaps into awareness. ‘Duchesse,’ he says. ‘My daughter, Bella.’
‘Miss Garraway,’ the Duc says. ‘Charmé.’ But he is already turning, already charmed, it seems, with the next entrants, and Bella sees no reason not to sink back into her chair as the room starts to fill.
5.
‘Charmed – delighted – couldn’t be more—’ the Duchesse says, sitting down by Bella. But she is talking, not to Bella but to a fast-approaching young man, pink in his half-worried, half-confident face. He bows rapidly, crumpling at the middle like a man who has been punched hard.
‘May I inquire,’ the young man says to the Duchesse. Bella stops paying any attention, and concentrates on her fan. The old people are coming in, showing no emotion, walking smoothly around each other, bowing automatically, like puppets on casters. The boy at the door is keeping up, but there is now quite a queue outside, waiting to hand their card and have him call their name. She is called back by her name.
‘I quite doted on Bella when she was too little to know who was kissing her goodnight,’ the Duchesse glitters, aiming her smile somewhere beyond the young man, bowing and smiling nervously. ‘Quite doted on her. I would hug her and affection her, and – such a pretty little thing, and now, quite such a beauty, now, don’t blush, my dear.’
Bella bows, remembering very well what it was like to be clutched to the swarthy old Duchesse’s bosom, heavy and spiked with trinkets; it felt like falling through the window of a jeweller’s shop. The Duchesse bows back, and then the young man bows, and they are all precisely like an entire yard full of tired chickens. She was no Duchesse then, but only an old spinster. The young man presents a familiar face to Bella.
‘How do you do, Miss Garraway,’ the familiar face says.
‘How do you do,’ Bella says firmly back, smiling like the audience at a vaudeville.
‘Miss Gilbert,’ the yelping barker cries into the room, ‘and Miss Jane Gilbert.’
She sees from the smiling guest’s proprietorial security, his relaxed saunter back into the chair, that this is the son of the house. She corrects herself, looking at Lady Woodcourt, who has no sons. She is no more fecund than a sideboard. This, surely, is the guest of honour. ‘How do you do, Mr Burnes. Do you find the climate here suits you? Or do you long for the East?’
‘Have you read Mr Burnes’s book, Miss Garraway?’ the Duchesse interposes. ‘I rave over it – the learning – the wit – the fierce fierce tribes of the exotic East. How brave – how heroic you have been, sir. Have you read his book?’
‘I have tried, sir, so many times, and each time the bookseller sends me back empty promises, leaving me abandoned. I am not entirely hopeless, but your bookseller is quite the jilt, Mr Burnes.’
The Duchesse laughs brilliantly, flutingly; a youthful and yet historic noise, a descending scale directly from old Queen Charlotte’s nurseries. If the Duchesse laughs, there can be no impropriety whatever in this corner of the blue and gold drawing room. Two sisters approach, their faces long as doors: the Gilbert sisters. In mourning, as they so often are, they scrutinize Burnes efficiently. The elder is twenty-seven, and five years ago was sadly disappointed in love; the younger is no older than Bella, but already has her sister’s half-angry air, and will come to nothing in the end.
‘Quite the jilt,’ Bella says, as the sisters move on.
‘You must tell us,’ the Duchesse continues, ‘of your adventures in Bokhara. I long – I pine – for the story, the entire tale, from the horse’s mouth.’
‘So long and dull a story can hardly interest ladies,’ Burnes says conventionally.
‘No, no, Mr Burnes,’ the Duchesse says, but she seems to take him at his word, since she rises and goes, smiling, into the crush. The room is crowded now, and Bella’s father, there, fifteen yards away, is fixed in his gaze and uncomprehending. One of the Gilbert sisters is talking at him, and directing a fierce laugh at him, the laugh of someone who knows rejection well; he looks like a frightened old man. This is how it is, an hour after his dose. She does not know, and does not wish to know, where he buys what he needs; she only knows, with a wave of shame, that he no longer even talks about it. She wants to rescue her father, there, standing in the embrace of his invisible ruby witch. Burnes, next to her, is twitching like a bird on the branch. It is her duty to carry on talking to him about his East, but she looks at her father and has nothing to say to such a stranger.
6.
Through these evenings, these festive London gatherings, people move without any will, like balls on a billiard table. At one end of the space, new balls spill into the confined space, and at the far end, the balls drifting around the smooth space prod each other and drift off unpredictably. An announcement at the door, a pair of new arrivals, somehow nudges the room along a little, and the mass, unwilled, cannons through the room, and the last ripple brings Burnes to his feet, and face to face with Stokes, a brilliant and brilliantly polished writer for the journals, his head smooth and gleaming like marble, his glittering spectacles always ready to be whisked off to make a point. They greet each other, silently.
‘I understand, Mr Burnes, that you have been signally honoured,’ Stokes begins.
‘Beyond my desserts, no doubt, sir,’ Burnes says.
‘I heard that you were signally honoured,’ Stokes persists. ‘By our friend in Brighton.’
‘I would hardly call the King my friend,’ Burnes says. Or yours, he seems to insist.
‘That must have been a thrilling occasion, sir,’ Stokes said.
‘If I were, indeed, honoured by the King’s curiosity in my explorations,’ Burnes says, ‘you could hardly expect me to tell you the purport of the conversation.’
‘Come, come, Burnes,’ Stokes says. ‘I meant no affront. I did not think it was so very secret. It was from the – no, better not to say – but it was from a gentleman of the Court that I heard the interesting fact. Would you prefer to find some more quiet place to talk?’
‘No, sir,’ Burnes said. ‘I can have nothing to say to you that I would keep from any person here present. I was honoured by the King’s interest, who had read my book with the greatest curiosity, and I received the King’s gracious command to Brighton. That is all. A trivial meeting, made remarkable only by the King’s majesty. There is really nothing more to say.’
(He resists the recall of the jovial bulging maggot in silk stockings and a scrubby wig, thumping the floor with his stick, his nervous Queen clutching the gilt sides of the chair, underneath the vast grand mouldings and velvet and gilt, what passed in his late brother’s mind for an oriental palace, and asking such blunt ordinary wrong questions it was not in him to know how to respond, to offer any kind of satisfaction.)
‘Your reticence does you credit, sir,’ Stokes says. ‘I have read your book, and greatly admire it. You exhibit the greatest faculties of curiosity, erudition and exposition. But I reached the end of your book with one burning question, ah, as it were, unextinguished. What in heaven’s name are we doing in Afghanistan? What, come to that, are we doing in India?’
‘Sir, I hardly know what you can mean.’
‘My meaning is this,’ Stokes continues. ‘What drove us to acquire our oriental possessions? And what is driving us to acquire still more? I presume, sir, that you were not in Kabul in pure curiosity. I presume, in short, that your mission was conducted to the sound of those siren voices enjoining us to occupy the whole of Asia, and bankrupt our children and our children’s children and our children’s children’s children. There can be no doubt that you were there to prepare for us to acquire the Punjab, to repeople Afghanistan with our sons and daughters, and open up yet another bottomless pit, to swallow our limited resourc
es – resources which could be put to better use two miles from this house, to clothe and feed the filthy urchins who will beg a farthing from you, and from me, the second we leave our so agreeable hostess’s embrace this evening. What, sir, in heaven’s name, are we doing in India?’
‘You are quite wrong, Mr Stokes,’ Burnes says. This is a familiar argument; he has had it, indeed, with Stokes on previous occasions. ‘There is no intention to add the Punjab or the western tracts of land to our possessions. My mission was purely geographical, purely driven by curiosity. But what, sir, would be the alternative you propose? Were we to stay at home and do nothing?’
‘And why not? What is so wrong with being satisfied with what you have?’
‘Nothing, sir, unless you have the spirit of a Briton. Our possessions, sir, are vast new markets. Do you suppose our little island can contain our native spirit? Of course it cannot. And should we stay at home, relinquish India tomorrow, what would happen? Would the natives not slide back into all manner of native barbarities – the murder of travellers, the forced suicide of widows? Thuggee and suttee? Would the precious flame of Christianity survive six months in such a poisoned atmosphere? Would India, indeed, be left to its own devices? Would not the French perceive an empty space? Would not Russia send its vast armies to bring new barbarities to a barbarous land? Sir, I suspect you of the worst sort of cynicism.’
The Mulberry Empire Page 6