Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  'He can't think the World has forgotten the Powderham Castle affair; it's only been, what, three years,' remarked Richmond.

  Of all the ludicrous risks for Beckford to run, thought Derby, to molest a boy—Lord Loughborough's nephew, what's more—while the house was full of visitors. The sugar heir must have known he was courting ostracism and exile.

  'Sir William Hamilton defends him and says there was never any proof,' mentioned Mrs Damer, her eyes on her plate.

  'I never liked Vathek,' said Lady Mary with a little shudder.

  'No, the tale reveals Beckford's propensities on every page,' agreed her husband. 'Didn't he cause his wife's death, too?'

  'Childbirth kills many,' Mrs Damer pointed out.

  'She must have been weakened by the mortification of the scandal, surely,' said Sir Harry.

  'But your news of Beckford's return is out of date, Edgcumbe,' Walpole put in with his well-informed smirk. 'The family packed him off again to their estates in Jamaica—but the amusing thing is my correspondent at Lisbon reports the young man has hopped ship there.'

  'I don't call that very amusing, I must say.' Mrs Hobart sniffed.

  Walpole gave shrug. 'At my age, madam, most things are amusing.'

  A servant muttered over Derby's shoulder, 'Roast fowl, M'Lord?'

  'Oh, yes.' At last the fowl had made it to his plate and there was still one thigh left. Sometimes at these dinners one might watch a favourite dish wander back and forth in front of one's nose, without ever getting to taste it. Derby dowsed his plate in oyster sauce.

  'Your cousin is British Minister at Lisbon, isn't he?' Mrs Damer asked Walpole.

  'Yes, and he swears he won't receive the sinner, won't present him to Queen Maria—and Beckford's relatives won't send him any letters of introduction—so he remains excluded from all good society.'

  'Need we talk of the nasty monster?' said Mrs Hobart, wriggling in her seat.

  'Certainly not, if you don't like,' said Walpole, changing the subject smoothly. 'In Russia, so my diplomat nephew Mr Fawkener tells me, dinner is served one dish at a time.'

  Lady Mary turned her long lashes on him. 'But that must take all night.'

  'They don't have half so many dishes,' he explained, 'only one big one for each course. The servants bring it round and serve every guest in turn.'

  'How very odd.'

  'The food must stay hotter,' Derby suggested, 'if it doesn't sit on the table for an hour.'

  'Yes, but it doesn't sound very varied or convivial,' Richmond protested.

  'Relaxing, though,' said Mrs Damer. 'Without all the to-and-fro of serving each other, and the interruptions, one could concentrate on conversation.'

  'Oh, I think we manage well enough already,' said Derby. 'More mutton, Miss Farren?'

  The actress shook her head, but this time she met his eyes for half a second.

  Derby rinsed his fingers in the water bowl by his plate, then leaned back as the servants removed all the dishes and pulled off the cloth to show the handsome mahogany table.

  'Is this chestnut purée from Gunter's?' Eliza was asking her hostess.

  'Where else?' said Mrs Damer. 'And the cornucopia of spiced biscuits, and those bergamot wafers.'

  'Gunter's my neighbour in Berkeley Square,' Walpole boasted. 'Best ices in the city.'

  Derby had a bowl of Parmesan cheese ice cream, but left half of it to melt. He watched Eliza out of the corner of his eye, passing her some burnt almond sorbet and a glass of orange wine from the cordial frame.

  After the table had been cleared they drank toasts to the health of all the ladies present and to the excellence of the food. Derby would usually have proposed Fox and he guessed that Richmond would have named the King, but on this occasion they both refrained. Their hostess called for paper and pencils so they could have a game of verses. 'For theme, an old favourite,' she said with a grin, 'the war of the sexes.'

  'Ha ha!'

  'Come down, o muse,' murmured Derby.

  'Of course,' said Richmond, 'we have one muse among us already—Thalia, Muse of Comedy.' He dipped his head towards the actress.

  Scattered claps greeted the compliment and Derby felt a prickle of resentment.

  'Richmond, your partner shall be ... Mrs Hobart,' announced their hostess, 'and I'll pick Sir Harry. Let's pair Mrs Farren with Walpole—'

  The actress's mother looked paralysed by fright and muttered something about her incapacity.

  'No, you can't withdraw,' Eliza told her in a low voice, 'or we'll have odd numbers.'

  'Fear not, good lady,' said Walpole merrily, 'just make a stab at it and I'll supply rhymes enough for both of us.'

  'That leaves Edgcumbe and Lady Mary, and Derby and Miss Farren.'

  She planned this, thought Derby, glancing gratefully at Mrs Damer. She's giving me a chance. But his mind was blank. Whatever he wrote would have to bear reading aloud, they were all sitting too close together for him to risk a secret note. He concentrated furiously and produced four halting lines, which he passed down the table with a sheepish smile. Eliza read the slip, but her face told him nothing. There was a little bead of moisture at her hairline, he noticed. The room was warm.

  'Done,' cried Mrs Hobart, thrusting her page into the Duke's lap.

  'A moment, I beg you,' said the actress. She wrote two lines, quickly, then folded the paper.

  'Miss Farren,' said Mrs Damer, 'won't you give us courage by being the first to recite your partner's verse?'

  Eliza's rich tones filled the dining room.

  Poor Adam longed to open up his heart

  To his fair love, but alas, he lacked the art.

  Women are famous talkers one and all—

  Ever since Madam Eve brought on the Fall.

  'Good hit, Derby!' Dick Edgcumbe clapped.

  Derby made a face. 'The metre's most irregular.'

  'How our masters at Eton would have caned us for such a slip,' cried Richmond.

  Derby accepted the page Eliza passed up the table to him and cleared his throat. 'Ladies and gentlemen, Thalia's eloquently terse reply:

  Some say that ladies gossip worse than men—

  But every noisy cock drowns out his hen.'

  'You've topped him.' Mrs Damer beamed at the actress.

  'A perfect analogy for the Master of British Cocking,' said Lady Mary.

  'I wouldn't say your sex gossip worse than mine on the whole,' Walpole quipped to Eliza. 'I'd say better. Besides, gossip's only a nasty word for the thread that binds society together.'

  When the verses had been read, Walpole suggested they all come up to Mrs Damer's drawing room to see his terracotta eagle.

  'No doubt the less abstemious gentlemen would rather stay and drink,' she rebuked him gently.

  'No, no, let's not divide our cosy party,' said Derby, leaping to his feet.

  The bird stood furled in rage on his square pedestal. 'Charming,' cooed Lady Mary.

  'That's a mild word for such a fierce bird,' said Derby.

  'Oh,' cried Eliza, 'but it's transformed since I saw it last. Those eyes—'

  How odd, thought Derby, she's been in Mrs Damer's workshop.

  'It's got something of you about it,' Richmond told his sister-in-law.

  'Hasn't it, though,' cried Walpole. 'Young Missy in a tantrum at Strawberry Hill, as on the occasion when I slapped her legs for stealing the heads off all my roses.'

  The company roared with laughter. Derby grinned at Mrs Damer, whose cheeks were pink. 'You haven't signed it.'

  She shrugged. 'My godfather knows who made it.'

  'But after I'm gone—which could be any day now,' Walpole told the company dramatically, causing more titters—'the heedless World must be reminded; it's always so quick to call a lady's work the secret production of some gentleman. The pedestal must say, Non me Praxiteles finxit, at Anna Damer, 1787.'

  The gentlemen all clapped. Watching Eliza's animated smile, Derby remembered that she knew no Latin. 'Not Praxiteles the famous sc
ulptor, but Anne Damer, made me,' he glossed it in a murmur.

  'That's enough flattery,' said Mrs Damer; 'who'll take tea and who'll take brandy?'

  The silver slider the brandy stood in bore their hostess's crest, Derby noticed as he helped himself; it was rather unorthodox for a lady to display her coat of arms, but then Mrs Damer was a very independent character.

  Sir Harry was prevailing upon the actress to favour them with a song. She chose Handel's 'Chastity, Thou Cherub Bright', which Derby couldn't help taking rather personally. Then Mrs Damer, apologising for her voice, said she'd oblige with a piece of Dibdin's, because it alluded to her chosen art.' We bipeds made up of frail clay,' she sang merrily,

  Alas are the children of sorrow,

  And though brisk and merry today,

  We all may be wretched tomorrow...

  Afterwards the talk drifted inevitably to the Prince of Wales, whose debts were to be cleared by the public purse at last. 'Isn't it strange,' Mrs Damer murmured, 'how much sympathy this scandal has earned for Mrs Fitzherbert?'

  'I think her a heroine,' said Eliza. 'People have abused her for the secret wedding, but doesn't it show strength of mind? Instead of succumbing to the predictable carnal intrigue with the Prince, she held out against all his pleas and threats until he married her.'

  She was looking across the tea table, nowhere near Derby, but he knew she was talking to him and his face began to scald.

  'If the reports of their sending a child abroad are true, she's had to make a terrible sacrifice. It's not her fault that her husband tried to disown her as a harlot for the sake of his debts,' she finished sharply.

  There was a silence. Derby thought the guests were probably wondering what they'd stoop to for the sake of £300,000.

  'She is very pious for a Catholic,' observed Mrs Hobart.

  'She has self-respect,' Eliza said.

  'Yes,' said Derby, the single syllable like a pill in his throat. Eliza glanced over at him. 'The Prince shouldn't have asked what she couldn't give,' he went on in a neutral tone, as if he weren't talking to the woman he adored. 'Since by the Royal Marriages Act he was prevented from offering Mrs Fitz a valid union, he should have respected her principles and bitten his tongue.'

  'Given her up, you mean?' asked Richmond, confused.

  'Or loved her, but at arm's length.' Derby cleared his throat.

  'You're very high-minded tonight,' said Dick Edgcumbe with a snort.

  Derby could tell that the group was puzzling over this stern condemnation of the Prince by a Foxite, since that Party had always been so indulgent to their royal patron. And amused by the very notion of Europe's most famous royal lecher attempting platonic love. Be careful what you say, he told himself, or you'll end up a laughing stock. This was absurd, this indirect communication with Eliza, but what if it was Derby's only chance? What if he waited and said nothing tonight, and didn't lay eyes on her for another two months?

  Lady Mary helped herself to a pinch of scented snuff from an exquisite egg-shaped box with her husband's portrait on it and handed it on to her sister.

  Derby had to drag in the theme of reconciliation somehow. 'Fox still hasn't forgiven Prinny for his lies. How sad,' he said too vehemently, 'when people who care for each other let the cord of friendship snap.' He looked everywhere in. the room but at the actress. 'One stupid little row to end so many years of intimacy!'

  Another silence. Mrs Damer sneezed into her handkerchief. 'Mm. Marvellous stuff, this Bolongaro. Would anyone like some?'

  'Is it violet-scented, like the Queens?' asked Mrs Hobart.

  'No, she takes Macouba, I believe; too flowery for me.'

  As the tea kettle was filled up again by the footman, Mrs Damer turned to the silent chaperone. 'Are you and your daughter happy in your present lodgings, Mrs Farren?'

  The sudden question threw the woman into a pop-eyed panic.

  Her daughter came to the rescue. 'Great Queen Street is just a few minutes from the theatre and it suits us well enough.'

  'I ask,' said Mrs Damer, giving Derby a glance so brief that only he would notice, 'because I happen to know of a house just round the corner from here on Green Street'—she gestured through the wall—'which is falling vacant next month.'

  'Which?' Eliza wanted to know, after a slight hesitation.

  'The one with the bow window.'

  'Oh, that's in a fine terrace,' said Walpole, who'd been born in Mayfair and knew every inch of it. 'But no mews for stabling, alas. I have trouble enough in Berkeley Square—'

  'Miss Farren doesn't keep a carriage,' said Derby, before he could stop himself. Eliza looked over at him and he feared his remark had sounded proprietorial.

  'Green Street would be an excellent address, wouldn't it?' she asked her mother. Mrs Farren looked back with a pent-up face.

  Derby's heart was thudding. Was it possible? She'd be living in the heart of Mayfair, five minutes' walk from Derby House. They'd almost be neighbours. But could she afford it, on a salary of £17 a week not counting Bens? He resisted a mad impulse to send over to Derby House for his pocketbook, so he could fling banknotes into his beloved's lap.

  The conversation trailed off into other matters: fashions and the latest from Versailles (where the Princesse de Polignac was now the Queen's unrivalled favourite), and the weather. Derby heard none of it. At the end of the evening he stood beside Eliza in the hall. 'Might I have the honour to drop you and your mother home, Miss Farren?'

  A tiny silence. 'Thank you, that would be kind.'

  Joy started up between his ribs.

  EVEN IF he wasn't running a horse on Derby Day at Epsom, the Earl always went down to Surrey to cast his blessing on the race that bore his name. This year the Farrens went with him, since Eliza had a few days' breathing space before the Haymarket's summer season, and Derby assured her that Epsom was much quieter and more respectable than Newmarket; nowadays it was very rare for disappointed bettors to horsewhip a jockey.

  Though most gentlemen were watching from horseback or their carriages, strung along the edge of the course, Derby led his guests to reserved seating at the top of a small stand. Three rows below sat Prinny, beside Mrs Fitz; Eliza was glad that she wasn't the only lady attending this race. A breeze lifted the carefully shaped curls off her jaw. Down at the track a crowd was milling, held back only by a chain strung between posts.

  'To be strictly fair,' said Derby, settling the tails of his buff coat under him, 'Bunbury and I invented the race together over a long night's drinking at Brooks's. At the time, you see, most runs were for four-year-olds or older—strong, heavy goers—over courses of at least four miles, with handicaps, which tested nothing but stamina.'

  'A worthy quality,' said Eliza, straight-faced. Wasn't Derby that kind of horse himself? Stamina was his main advantage as a suitor; God knew, she could have had her pick of handsomer men.

  His eyes registered the tease. 'Certainly, but what about sheer, glorious speed? Bunbury and I came up with the idea of setting younger horses over a shorter course, say, three-year-olds over a mile and a half with level weights. Speaking of novelties—' He pulled out a silver watch and flipped it open to show Mrs Farren a tiny spinning hand. 'What do you think that shows, madam?'

  The older woman's eyes were a vacant blue when she stared up from her knotting. (Eliza had recently persuaded her mother that the making of decorative braids was a genteeler way of occupying her hands than needlework.)

  'Fifths of a second,' he told her.

  'How very ... accurate, My Lord.'

  Eliza let out a giggle. 'You must forgive me, Derby, but I really can't—I simply don't understand the appeal of sports.' Derby laughed. Oh, it was good to be on these pleasant terms again. There was so much about this man that Eliza liked: his intelligence, his humour. 'Of course I can see it's pleasant if one's own horse wins,' she corrected herself, 'or the horse one's put a guinea on. But I can't see its importance.'

  'What if one stands to win iooo guineas?' he suggeste
d. 'The Derby's a sweepstake, not a cup; we each put in 150, the runner-up gets 100 and the winner all the rest.'

  The figures staggered Eliza. 'Well, then the money would matter to me, I suppose,' she said carelessly, 'but not the race in itself. It's only animals running along a field, after all.'

  'Best keep your voice down in this company,' Derby whispered theatrically.

  'I'm sorry, I'm being very rude,' she said, giving him one of her slow-ripening smiles.

  'No, no, I appreciate your candour, Miss Farren, and I take your point. These are just games. It's an English preoccupation, all this racing and football and prizefighting; French visitors think us obsessed with speed and violence. But then, isn't much of life composed of games? What do you do at Drury Lane but play dress-up, like my daughters did at five years old, with papier mâché trees and folding knives?'

  Eliza looked away, pricked into resentment. Is that what he thought of her career? 'A game, perhaps, but a serious one.'

  He shrugged. 'One can take any game seriously. The more one knows about a game and the more one spends on it—whether time, thought, or money—the more serious it becomes.'

  'Well,' she said with a rueful nod at the racecourse, 'I certainly know very little about this one, so I'll shut my mouth.'

  'Please don't,' Derby told her fondly. 'What would you like to know?'

  Where to start? The jockeys were leading out the horses, with their stubby tails. 'Are these all ... males?'

  'No, no,' he assured her, 'colts and fillies together; we don't exclude the gender sex from the turf! In fact, some of the great Derby winners have been fillies, many of them sired by Eclipse—the best stud horse I've ever seen, a chestnut stallion who won eighteen races in a row. Gunpowder, that chestnut colt of Colonel O'Kelly's'—pointing at a horse, but Eliza couldn't tell which one—'he's by Eclipse.'

  'So ... many of these horses are cousins, as it were?' she asked.

  'Oh, all of them,' Derby assured her with a grin. 'It's worse than the House of Lords. There are really only three sure male lines: Eclipse, who was great-great-grandsired by the Darley Arabian—Herod, out of the Byerley Turk—and of course Matchem, from the Godophin Arabian. Then there were ten great foundation mares—'