Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  'Yes, with anti-war slogans printed on them,' she told him. 'I suppose it was thought the poor would pay more attention to a message if it were edible.'

  He let out a booming laugh, then stopped himself, glancing upwards.

  'Don't worry,' said Anne, 'my mother's room is in the west wing and she'll be asleep by now.' She smiled at him. Somehow, meeting again under these peculiar circumstances had freed her from any trace of awkwardness with O'Hara; they were the old friends they'd always been.

  Richmond, loosened by brandy, told the humiliating story of his dismissal after more than a decade of tireless service. 'That's Pitt's whole first Cabinet purged in a mere six years. Clearly there's not a single ally he wouldn't sink a knife into,' he concluded bitterly.

  The Duchess patted his arm like a mother. 'To be honest, O'Hara,' Richmond went on, 'I dream of retiring altogether, just hunting and sailing my sloop and messing about on the farm. II faut cultiver notre jardin, as Diderot put it.'

  Voltaire, Anne silently corrected him.

  Walpole spoke shakily about the glorious military career of 'Harry Conway, the dearest friend I ever had. His favourite medicine was magnesia, you know, to purify the blood; you should all try it. I take it every morning.'

  Anne mentioned that he'd left a tiny Temple of Harmony unfinished, on the hill; that wouldn't please him. 'I wish you'd had the chance to know my father better,' she told Mary, wiping her eyes.

  'One had only to meet Conway once or twice,' said O'Hara in his deep growl, 'to know him for a sweet, good man.'

  The remark filled her with a wave of gratitude. 'How long can you stay with us, General?'

  He made polite noises.

  'Oh, now you're here, do grant us a fortnight or more.'

  'But you and your family—'

  'Believe me, company is just the cordial for our spirits,' she said. 'Miss Berry will be staying a while, won't you?'

  'As long as you need me,' said Mary, pressing her shoulder.

  Much later Anne and Walpole were the only ones left by the fire. 'I shouldn't keep you from your slumbers,' he said. 'I'm a terrible one for sitting up late.'

  'That's all right,' she said, staring into the flames. She didn't like the thought of going into her bedroom and shutting the door. She was one step nearer to death now; the firm barricade of her father had been knocked down.

  When Walpole broke the silence his tone was curiously tentative. 'Harry and I had some trouble, once.'

  'You quarrelled?' Anne wasn't sure she wanted to hear this, not tonight.

  'Oh, no, not trouble between us, no; never that. Fuss with the press, I mean. A trouble shared, a trouble halved, or perhaps doubled, that sort of thing.'

  Anne's pulse began to hammer. Could he be tipsy? What fuss with the press?

  'It was political, of course, these things usually are.'

  'What happened?' She sounded too accusatory.

  'Oh, the pamphlets, mm,' said Walpole, his gaze inward. 'I'd written an address in defence of your dear father, you see, when he was unjustly dismissed from Lord Grenville's government for opposing some measures of the King's. This was '64, if memory serves—what an eternity ago!—and Harry was one of the first Whigs brave enough to stand up against the encroachments of royal power. I had these visions—Walpole produced the word mockingly—'of your father and me leading a truly just government, if we ever got the chance. At any rate my defence of my dear cousin prompted a wave of vileness from Grub Street. One pamphlet called me hermaphroditical,' he said with a tiny laugh, 'said our alliance was an affaire de coeur.'

  Anne stared at him.

  'They claimed I was enrolling in the lists in defence of my first love, for whom I'd harboured an unsuccessful passion for twenty years!'

  She had to look away. She'd known that there were rumours about Walpole, of course—sly digs at his manhood, the Honourable Lady Walpole and all that—but to learn that he and her own bluff father had been connected in the press...'Did you issue a denial?' she asked a little hoarsely.

  'Not a bit of it,' said Walpole with satisfaction. 'I replied in an open letter, saying that I'd loved Conway for more like thirty years than twenty, and that I saw nothing unsuccessful about it.'

  Anne loosened into laughter. 'What a neat answer.'

  'I thought so.'

  'What did my father say about it?'

  'The attack, or the defence?'

  'Either. Both.'

  'D'you know,' said Walpole, 'I don't believe we ever discussed the matter.'

  Was he simply telling her an old, painful story, or giving her a message? The face of Eliza Fatten flashed in front of her eyes like a warning beacon. As a woman, Anne could hardly rattle off a smart riposte in the form of an open letter. 'My situation is rather different.'

  'Oh, quite so,' he assured her. 'My only point is that snide calumny should never be allowed to overshadow the unalterable affections of the heart. We who have a talent for friendship are often persecuted. These sensibilities seem to run in families,' he added, as if to himself.

  Anne stared at his bent head. What exactly did he mean by these sensibilities? But she didn't want to press him; not tonight, when his face looked far more worn with grief than her own.

  'YOU'LL HAVE to take Mother.'

  The half-sisters in matching charcoal silk were standing at the gallery window, staring out at the rain-sodden terrace. Anne's head shot round. 'Wait one moment.'

  'There's nothing to discuss,' said the Duchess of Richmond. 'It's the only solution.'

  Was this her playful, easygoing sister? There were irritable lines round her eyes and not from grief; Lady Mary had liked her stepfather, but not immoderately.

  'Mother can't stay here,' Lady Mary went on. 'Park Place is a chilly wasteland without Conway—and an expensive one, may I add. She'd sink into one of her glooms, you know she would.'

  'But—'

  'Are we to buy her one of those new wooden companions they sell in furniture shops—a painted cut-out in the shape of a female friend?'

  What a macabre image. Anne folded her arms. 'I've no objection to Mother leaving Park Place,' she said, 'if that's her wish.'

  'It should be sold, really. I wonder what it would fetch?'

  'Must I remind you,' said Anne with a shaking voice, 'that my father is only two days in the ground?'

  The Duchess looked a little ashamed of herself.

  'Mother could use the house in Soho Square.'

  'What, live alone in London? She wouldn't dream of it.'

  'It's not such a pathetic way of life,' Anne snapped. 'But if you think the country more suitable, the best home for her would surely be Goodwood, with her married daughter, whom she likes so well.' Married, childless and idle, with plenty of money and space, Anne added in her head.

  Lady Mary stared at her. 'But my dear, what can you be thinking of? Richmond and I are in such poor health these days—the thing's impossible.'

  Anne bit her lip. Only last autumn the Duke had claimed that he and Lady Mary would love Anne to live with them. Had that only been duty, and pity?

  'I've lost two stone,' said her sister. 'I suffer from constant rumbling and inflammation, with dark bile; my nerves keep me fidgeting all night.'

  'I'm sorry to hear it.' Anne was remembering how stylish and serene Lady Mary had been in the old days at Richmond House.

  'No, no, Mother must move in with you at Grosvenor Square, Anne, that's the only thing for it. She won't be any trouble.'

  Then why not put her up in one of Goodwood's empty wings? Why not leave me my independence, and my friends, and my art?

  'She'll like the stimulus of town; she can pay calls and go to parties.'

  Anne had a dreadful picture of herself as the unmarried daughter, shunting her mother from occasion to occasion, carrying both their reticules, reminding her of names, listening to all the familiar stories. I'm too old for this.

  'So that's settled; I'm glad,' said Lady Mary. It struck Anne that her sister's bland
mildness had always concealed this quality of steel. This was ridiculous, Anne should fight back—but she felt too battered after the funeral and a sleepless night. Besides, perhaps this was a matter of conscience. How could Lady Ailesbury find any peace with such a selfish daughter as the Duchess?

  'Who's that with Miss Berry in the orchard?' murmured Lady Mary.

  Anne followed her eyes. 'O'Hara,' she said, making out the broad shoulders. 'She's showing him the new pear and quince trees.'

  'Is she, indeed?' The phrase lingered oddly on the air. 'There's something I want to ask you about Miss Berry.'

  Anne's heart seemed to stop for a moment. Was the interrogation to begin at last? Had her friendship with Mary Berry, her intensity, her manner, aroused her sister's disapproval? Anne didn't know whether to bark some retort or flee from the room.

  The Duchess was wearing rather a silly smile. 'Do you think he's serious?'

  'Serious?'

  'Or simply whiling away the summer?'

  'I'm at a loss; what are we talking about?'

  'Oh, Anne! Really, you're like some stern, oblivious goddess, floating through the mortal throng.' Her sister waited. 'Miss Berry and O'Hara, of course! He's been making de grands yeux at her for days.'

  Anne sat down, rather fast, and laid her hands on her skirts.

  'I do like a romance,' murmured Lady Mary, 'it livens up a visit so. And if both parties have the great luck to be unmarried—why, it suggests some interesting consequences.'

  Anne played for time. 'So you think it good luck to be unmarried?'

  'Oh, not in a general way, no; I find marriage vastly comfortable,' her sister assured her, arranging her skirts as she sat down at the gilt table. 'I only mean that if the parties in the romance are already married to other people, their attraction must remain a mere flirtation, or risk becoming dangerous. Whereas in the case of the General and your friend there's no such barrier. They're both entirely free, I think?'

  'I ... I can't answer for him,' said Anne, 'but Miss Berry has no suitor. As far as I'm aware.'

  'I think you'd know, you're such intimates.' Lady Mary laughed. 'So I return to my question: do you think O'Hara's serious?'

  A strange impulse of honesty made Anne say, 'It wouldn't surprise me if he were looking for a wife.'

  'Yes, he'll need one where he's going. It seemed at first as if the ministers here were slighting the General, because they gave the governorship of Gibraltar to someone else, but that man's dropped dead, so O'Hara's to have it after all. I wonder how Miss Berry will like the climate?'

  Gibraltar. Anne felt it like a blow to the stomach. So far away. She wanted to be alone, in her room, with the door locked. She'd failed to spot the pattern, pick up the signals. It was as if she'd sat through four acts of Othello under the impression that it was Twelfth Night. Could her sister be imagining the whole thing?

  'He's only known Miss Berry a matter of days, of course, but that can be long enough.'

  'No,' said Anne, 'my father first introduced them many years ago in Italy.'

  SEPTEMBER 1795

  When Anne thought of Conway she felt a dull sort of sadness, but she didn't think of him very often. She was more preoccupied with her mother, in whom widowhood was taking the form of a twitching, whining nervousness. Lady Ailesbury—once the supreme patroness of Rousseau and Madame Kauffmann—now couldn't bear to be alone. She had less of a head for business than any woman Anne knew. The aged Countess knew that Park Place had to be sold—and the last thing she wanted to do was to stay on there alone—but it was Anne who had to take the matter in hand and find an interested party: the Earl of Malmesbury. At least it gave her an excuse to go up early to London, where she met with Malmesbury's agent. Lady Ailesbury only agreed to stay in Park Place for the moment once Anne had found a young female cousin to keep her company.

  Anne felt suffocated by filial duty. One good thing: it drove her to her workshop again for the first time in a year and she began a clay model for a self-portrait. Her face seemed strange to her, somehow. She worked hard to trace her own sharp contours, struggling to get flexibility back into her fingers.

  She rarely went out. She didn't feel like cards, or conversation, and she never went to the theatre now, even Covent Garden, because it conjured up memories of Eliza Farren. The city was uneasy; the windows of no. 10 Downing Street had been smashed, something to do with the harvest. Lock your doors, I pray you, for my sake, Walpole wrote from the seclusion of Strawberry Hill. Have you heard the mob's latest battle-cry? No Famine, no War, no Pitt, no King!

  The Berrys had spent much of September in Cheltenham, taking the waters, for their health; several of Mary's letters mentioned that they'd seen O'Hara there. Anne read the casual phrases again and again. When the Berrys came back to Little Strawberry, Walpole mentioned to Anne that the General had developed a healthful habit of rowing up the river to Twickenham.

  One day she was ready. She sat down opposite Mary in the library at Little Strawberry and said, 'You're hurting me.'

  Mary jerked in her seat.

  'Do you think to spare me by your silence? Candour's the root of friendship; how can I be a true friend if you won't tell me what's in your heart?'

  The small woman had gone pale under the hail of questions. 'Is this about ... O'Hara?'

  'Whom else? Unless you've a whole roster of suitors you've failed to mention,' added Anne viciously.

  'Oh, Anne.' Mary's head sank down on to her hands.

  She waited.

  'I wanted, but I didn't dare to blurt anything out until I was sure; my spirits quailed. It seemed so ... so vain and foolish to presume anything till something was said. It's such a peculiar business.'

  Anne made herself say it. 'Courtship, you mean?'

  Mary shrank from the word. 'I've no experience. No wisdom. I never thought I was at risk, at the advanced age of thirty-two! How it must look—a penniless female—a distinguished war hero—'

  She couldn't stand for that. She seized Mary's left hand. 'You worried how it might look to whom—to the World? But why didn't you tell me? I'd never judge you harshly. What do I care whether you've a fortune or not? I'm sure O'Hara doesn't.'

  Mary's eyes were huge and inky. 'That's exactly what he said.'

  Anne winced. 'When?'

  'Yesterday, on the lawn here, under the mulberry tree. That's when it happened.' Her voice was exalted. 'Before that there was nothing definite I could have told you; it was all a matter of subtleties of impression; a certain atmosphere.'

  'He followed you to Cheltenham,' said Anne flatly, 'then he followed you back to Twickenham.'

  'He was in both places, yes, but I didn't like to draw any conclusions,' Mary twittered like a schoolgirl. 'But yesterday, under the mulberry tree—oh, Anne!'

  She couldn't look into those shining eyes. She stared at the table. There was some old tag singing in her head: Every man shall have his maid, every Jack his Jill. One thing she was glad of: that she'd never told Mary about that day, four summers ago, when O'Hara had seemed on the brink of proposing to her. 'He put the question?'

  No answer, only a letting out of breath.

  'And you accepted him.'

  Mary burst out laughing.

  Anne stared at her.

  'Oh, I'm sorry,' whooped Mary, 'I don't know what's come over me. It's just the relief of telling you, my dearest.'

  'Yes.'

  'The only proposal I ever received in my life and that it should be from him. From Charles O'Hara!' Her voice was worshipful.

  I'm lacking something, Anne thought, some vital female attribute. I've never said a man's name that way in my life. My best years are over and I've never known this happiness. Then she shut down her mind and began to perform the role that had been appointed to her. Somehow she knew all the lines. 'I'm so glad, my dear, so very glad,' she said.

  It must have sounded convincing, because Mary pulled her hand over and kissed her on the knuckle. 'I thought you would be, Anne. I hoped. I couldn't b
e sure—'

  'How could you have doubted me?'

  'Well, it's all so new and uncertain. We've been corresponding, a little, myself and the General, I mean, but it's difficult to do without attracting attention. Our future is one great blank. I'm very much hoping he'll be offered some high command here—'

  Mary sounded like a wife already, Anne thought; that tone of proprietorial anxiety. She lashed out. 'Oh, but haven't you heard? It's to be Gibraltar.'

  'Gibraltar?'

  'They mean to send him back as Governor.' Mary blanched and Anne twisted the knife. 'You must have known that they might send him anywhere in the Empire. In the past he's served all over the globe, from America to India.'

  'But—'

  'Don't tell me you never thought that this marriage would mean parting from your father, your sister, Walpole—'

  'From you! Mary's face was striped with tears. 'Oh, my darling, how could I bear to go so far away from you?'

  OCTOBER 1795

  Anne was very busy with her investigation. 'Continue corresponding with the General,' she urged Mary, 'but commit yourself no further and ask him for details of his future plans.' Meanwhile she pumped Walpole for old stories about O'Hara, the war hero who'd somehow emerged unscathed from such brutal captivity; she did the same with Richmond when he called for a glass of Madeira on one of his trips to town. (The Duke claimed he was needed at the Lords, but Anne had become aware of something in the air between him and his old friend Lady Bess at Devonshire House. She knew there was no sense in being shocked by this; her sister had never demanded fidelity, even when she'd been in the full of her health.) In Anne's almost daily letters to Lady Ailesbury—who was full of complaints about the wetness of the weather and the laxity of the maids—she encouraged her mother to reminisce about old friends including Lord Tyrawley, O'Hara's father.

  After a fortnight Anne was ready. She steeled herself with a line from an old book, she couldn't remember which: Marriage is the grave of friendship. She came to North Audley Street at a time when she knew the other Berrys would be out window-shopping and accepted a cup of tea. 'I've been looking into the matter, my dear, and I must tell you: I'm not happy.'