A Most Lamentable Comedy

by Janet Mullany

  ‘Was I truly horrid?’ I ask.

  He considers for a moment. ‘Absolutely. Shrill, demanding, voracious, unpredictable, expensive – all one could ask for in a mistress, in other words. Thank God we escaped each other.’

  ‘And look what I escaped to – Elmhurst, who never loved me as I loved him.’

  ‘Ah, Caro, don’t be sad.’ He puts his arm around my shoulders in a brief, friendly embrace, and for a moment I’m tempted to turn my head into his shoulder and weep; I, the woman who has cried for no one except Elmhurst, except now I feel like weeping for myself, what I have been, what I may become.

  Philomena’s irate voice makes us spring apart.

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit!’ She stands there, fury in her face and in her hair, which has unfortunately sprung its moorings and stands around her face in a great cloud. I wonder which one of us she means.

  ‘Must you pursue every man in sight, Lady Elmhurst?’

  ‘Philomena, I assure you—’

  She holds up one small, imperious hand. ‘No more.’

  Inigo steps forward. ‘Philomena, my love, you know I would never—’

  ‘No.’ She glares at him and a tear runs down her cheek. ‘No, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you any more.’ She runs back into the house.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, a dreadfully inadequate apology.

  ‘Oh, she’s – it’s her condition. I mean . . . Well, no, it isn’t – what the devil was she to think? Forgive me, Caro, I must go to her.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He bows and follows his wife into the house.

  I’m alone on the terrace – or I think I am, until a dark figure comes into view, and I nearly scream aloud.

  It’s Congrevance, a bottle cradled in one arm. I realise he is quite drunk and, from his ironic, weary smile, that he has seen the whole encounter between me, Inigo and Philomena.

  ‘Ill met by moonlight, fair Titania,’ he says.

  ‘Indeed. Good night, sir.’

  I pick my skirts up and run from him, back into the house, wishing I could undo all that has been done, or rather, all I have done today.

  12

  Mr Nicholas Congrevance

  I’m drinking brandy before dinner, having purloined the decanter from Otterwell’s library. One of his servants had filled it that afternoon, following my blackmail of his lordship. I am well on my way to emptying it.

  Barton maintains a rigid silence, brushing my evening coat while I sprawl in a chair in my shirt-sleeves.

  I’m the first to break down and speak. ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘Who, sir?’

  ‘Don’t play the halfwit retainer with me. Lady Elmhurst’s maid.’

  ‘Ah.’ Swish, swish, swish goes his brush.

  ‘Very well. Answer my question, if you please.’

  He lays the brush aside, twitches a sleeve back into place and holds the garment up for me. ‘Truth to tell, sir, we don’t talk much about you. Or Lady Elmhurst.’

  I wave him and the coat away. ‘It’s too hot. I’ll put it on before I go downstairs.’

  He looks at me, and then at the brandy decanter in my hand. ‘At this rate, sir, you’ll be descending them stairs rather faster than you might like.’

  ‘Hold your tongue.’ I pour myself another glass of brandy.

  ‘I heard it was a difficult rehearsal,’ he says after a short pause in which he selects a neckcloth.

  ‘Precisely why I don’t want to talk about it.’ My mind wanders around in a brandy-tinged maze for a while and settles on an earlier comment he made. ‘I pay you to talk about me, Barton. To Mary or whatever her name is. Why the devil aren’t you doing it?’

  ‘I’ve done my part, sir. Now it’s up to you.’

  ‘Up to me?’ I hold out my hand for the neckcloth. ‘I’ll tie that better drunk than you will sober. The emerald stickpin, if you please. Exactly what do you suggest?’

  I stand and regard my wavering reflection in the mirror. I suspect it is I and not the glass that wavers. My hands act of their own accord, creasing, folding, tying.

  Barton places the stickpin in the palm of my outstretched hand. ‘In the old days – before the Contessa and Venice, that is – you’d have had the business done and we’d be on our way by now, or being set up somewhere nice where—’

  ‘Everything is running according to plan, Barton. Trust me.’ An odd request for one rogue to make to another; but we two rogues are allies, or at least I think we are. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss the play, would you?’

  ‘Ah, the play, sir. Of course.’ He gives a longing glance at the false beard, mounted on an old wig stand in my bedchamber for safe keeping. ‘I see, sir. And the brandy . . . ?’

  ‘All part of the plan, Barton. All part of the plan.’ I jab the pin into the neckcloth.

  ‘Coat, sir.’ He holds it up. I shrug into it and straighten the sleeves while he pats and smoothes the shoulders.

  ‘Much obliged, Barton.’ I walk towards the door. Excellent. My gait is steady, if a trifle slower than usual.

  ‘Sir?’ He waves something black and shiny and bifurcated in my face.

  ‘What is it now, Barton?’

  ‘Shoes, sir.’

  I gaze down at my stockinged feet. Yes, shoes. A gentleman wears shoes to dinner.

  The mahogany surface of Otterwell’s table undulates.

  Very odd.

  Far away, I hear myself making eloquent comments about the play and our rehearsals. Why, no one would dream I was drunk. Other people pay attention to what I say, nod and respond.

  One person has little to say. She sits on the opposite side of the table, a few places down, so I can glance at her as though addressing the whole tablef the table shifts and the candle flames weave and pulse in a diverting way, she is a constant, the North Star on which I set my sights.

  Caroline. What the devil am I to do, what the devil am I doing?

  More to the point, what is she doing to me? And why is she so inattentive?

  Claret, that is the answer. More claret.

  We gather for a short time in the drawing room for tea and Mrs Gibbons speaks about something, I am not sure what, but it generates some lively discussion.

  Afterwards, I return to the dining room, where I had secreted a bottle behind a tapestry – an old trick, learned from when Barton and I fell on hard times. Very possibly we shall have to run through our entire repertoire of those tricks unless I can ensnare Caroline very soon.

  I wander into the garden, where it is dusk and fireflies dance and swoop; and from the shadows I see Caroline in Linsley’s arms.

  I have failed utterly.

  Of course she was his mistress once; I knew it from the first time I saw them together. But she wants him back; she’ll break pretty Mrs Linsley’s heart – why, I cannot believe that Caroline, my Caroline, could be so callous to her friends. I see it all now, brandy and claret making the situation damnably clear.

  Caroline is alone now. She rests her hands on the stone balustrade of the terrace and sighs.

  She looks up and our gazes lock.

  Ill met by moonlight, fair Titania.

  The bottle slips from my fingers and crashes to the flagstones, claret spreading like blood.

  And she runs into the house, leaving me alone in the night, where summer lightning flickers on the horizon and a few stars wheel crazily overhead. Were I to have a heart – but I do not – I think it might be broken.

  Lady Caroline Elmhurst

  ‘Downstairs,’ Mary says the next morning with great drama, ‘they all do say you are about to run off with Mr Linsley.’

  ‘Oh, what nonsense.’ I stand up and pace around the bedchamber, lines from the play running through my head. This evening we are to have our dress rehearsal and Otterwell has instructed us to rest or take what recreation we will during the day. ‘And have you learned anything more from your friend Mr Barton?’

  ‘Oh, we don’t talk much about you, milady
.’

  Insolent slut. ‘I trust he has not had his way with you, Mary, for I should have to sack you.’

  ‘Why, milady!’ Her eyes open wide in feigned shock. ‘As if I would! I am a decent woman, milady. I should not give my honour away so lightly.’

  In other words, they are at it like a pair of rabbits.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ I say, although for once I am not, but I might as well go downstairs and toy with some breakfast in a ladylike way for something to do. I have not slept well in the heat and my thoughts have made me wretched. I believed I had friends; to think I was hurt that Philomena did not tell me herself of her condition! I have offended Fanny, grieved Philomena, and fear a united front of hostility.

  Sure enough, I enter the morning room, where the ladies are gathered, and see their heads swivel towards each other as they talk with great animation of people I do not know. As the conversation progresses, I am not sure they do either.

  ‘I see the Sadlers are going to Scotland for the summer,’ Fanny says, a newspaper in her hand. ‘Why, their daughter is engaged at last.’

  Philomena wrinkles her brow and pronounces, ‘Yes, she is a very pretty girl – James, please take your fingers out of the jam.’

  ‘Never heard of them,’ says Mrs Riley. ‘Unless you mean the Salters, whose daughter ran off with a poet and then tried to drown herself in her bath, but that was some thirty years ago.’

  ‘Did she succeed?’ Philomena asks.

  ‘Good lord, no. She displaced so much water it caused a flood and water dripped into the drawing room. She was rather a stout girl.’ This said with a sidelong glance at me. Me, stout! I have a big bosom, that is all – the rest of me is quite slender. I have quite the most handsome bosom of the assembled ladies, I am sure – I know, in fact, that the gentlemen would agree; why, Otterwell has not looked me in the face once since I arrived.

  ‘No, no, that was not the Salters. Their daughter ran off with a dancing master and his best friend, a most effeminate sort of gentleman, and I believe all three set up house in Chester.’ Lady Otterwell snatches the paper from Fanny. ‘Oh good lord, look at the waistline on this gown; we shall all look frights. Where was this announcement, Fanny, about the Salters or whoever they are? To whom is she engaged?’

  ‘On the right-hand page, below the advertisement for pills for diseases of Venus.’ Fanny looks at me for the first time.

  ‘No, you are mistaken,’ says Lady Otterwell, peering at the paper. ‘I see no such thing.’

  Philomena looks up from wiping jam off her son. ‘I think we should go out for a walk, ladies.’

  They leave with great dignity.

  I only just restrain myself from sticking out my tongue at their stiff, retreating backs.

  I take some bread and butter and find the tea is lukewarm. After I ring the bell for a footman, eventually one wanders in, yawning and scratching at his wig. It is not so early, but probably they have been up for hours the night before rehearsing the play. I explain my predicament.

  ‘Beg your pardon, milady, only the housekeeper and Lady Otterwell have keys for the tea caddy and we don’t know where they are.’

  So even the servants conspire against me!

  ‘Nonsense!’ I remove a hairpin and approach the tea caddy, which stands in gilt and mahogany splendour on the mantelpiece. After a few minutes’ work, the lock is picked and the lid open.

  The footman gapes at me.

  ‘I learned to do it at school; it is a most useful skill. Now fetch me some hot water, if you please.’

  When he does return with the water it is not boiling and I have to send him back. I suspect he has gone to boil the water on a fire a mile distant, he takes so long.

  The amount of work I have had to do for a hot cup of tea is shocking!

  I recognise the footman now – he is the one who held my parasol while I produced an execrable mess of paint when we picnicked. He now seems inclined to chat – I suspect he should be working elsewhere cleaning something unpleasant – and tells me that the gentlemen are out riding. At least I shall not have to face masculine disapproval just yet. I fiddle around with my breakfast and drink the rest of my tea.

  It is going to be a long day. I fetch my hat and set out for a stroll in the gardens – that is, a stroll in the shade and a quick dash when I must go into the sun. I feel odd and out of sorts. For a moment I wonder whether it is lack of sleep and hunger, after my insubstantial breakfast, and then realise that what I feel is loneliness.

  What a dreadful ninny I have become.

  My wanderings take me into a cool, shady spot where there is a stone bench surrounded by moss and ferns. Had I thought of it, I would have brought a fashion paper or novel to read, but after sitting yawning for a time, I stretch out on the bench. Of course it will be impossible to fall asleep . . .

  Mr Nicholas Congrevance

  My head certainly needed clearing this morning and I find the ride with Otterwell and Linsley just the thing. Otterwell is in good spirits, playing the gracious host, pointing out features of his land that he is particularly proud of – a tenant’s cottage converted into a miniature Parthenon, for instance.

  ‘Splendid.’ Linsley reins in his mare. ‘I think, Otterwell, you may have a leak in the roof – see how it sags.’

  ‘Nonsense, man!’ Otterwell frowns. ‘What ou think, Congrevance? It is to my own plan, you know.’

  ‘Most artistic, sir, but the chimney looks about to come down.’

  Otterwell raises his hat to a woman who hoes the garden, a child at her skirts. ‘A good morning to you, Mrs Fell. And how is young Jack?’

  ‘Good morning, my lord, sirs. Beg pardon, but I’m Mrs Fuller and this is my daughter Joan. And it’s true what the gentlemen say about the roof and chimney, we’ve had that much damp in here, mushrooms grow in the dresser—’

  ‘Very well, my good woman. I’ll have the bailiff come out when he’s not busy.’ Otterwell’s tone indicates his tenants have been inconsiderate enough to change names and gender purely to provoke him. He sets forward at a brisk trot.

  The ride concludes with an invigorating gallop across a section of heath, brilliant with furze. A pair of kites circle overhead in the bright blue sky. We arrive back at the house and Linsley and Otterwell repair to the morning room for breakfast, while I take a stroll around the grounds. I had hoped the drink last night and the ride this morning might stop me thinking of Caroline.

  It hasn’t. I keep remembering last night, Caroline in Linsley’s arms, their low, intimate whispers and laughter. What is wrong with me? I find myself, terrifyingly, wanting her to tell me it is all a terrible misunderstanding, or that I had a nightmare. I want her to smile at me, to kiss me; I want to pick her flowers, like that sentimental clod Barton does for his Mary. I haven’t felt this way, distracted and unsure of myself with a woman, since I was sixteen, and that was a disaster I don’t care to dwell upon. Oh yes, I believed myself then desperately in love—

  What? In love?

  It must be all the Shakespeare and sentiment and silliness and hot weather and exposed bosoms. I am not myself. Possibly I caught some mysterious malady from that Venetian canal and my brain is affected. This thought does not cheer me.

  I wander among Otterwell’s beautifully clipped yews and down a mossy path, at the end of which is a stone bench.

  On that bench Caroline lies asleep. Her bonnet dangles from one hand, the other is under her cheek. She looks younger, defenceless and peaceful – so often she has a fierce sort of restlessness that exhilarates and arouses me. I have the urge to protect her – from adventurers such as myself, for instance.

  I step forward. I remember how she feels in my arms, when she swooned at the inn; or when I quite unnecessarily tumbled her into the bracken (with the basest of intentions); or the chaste embraces of the play. I remember her laughing with young Will, her hat full of bait, and her kindness to him.

  And, oh God, she may love Linsley still. Naturally we did not mention the subject
on our ride – it would have been thoroughly ungentlemanly and I might have lapsed into sentimental ramblings and embarrassed myself.

  A lock of hair has fallen over her cheek. Her bosom rises and falls.

  I kneel at her side. ‘Caroline,’ I whisper. I smooth the lock of hair back.

  She makes a sound that might, under other circumstances, be described as a grunt.

  Her cheek is soft and smooth.

  I should let her sleep. I should let her alone, but there is one thing I must ask her before I leave: does she love Linsley? (I must stay for the damned play, it is my duty as a gentleman.)

  I should speak to her when she is awake and vertical, but the temptation to touch her and hold her one last time is too great – yes, indeed, I seem to have an arm around her and her lips inches from my own. Reason tells me that even if she did not harbour a partiality for Linsley, I have only made a fool of myself with her thus far; things have not progressed as they should. There must be other rich and willing widows in England who would be far less work – we shall go to Bath, or some other watering place, I and Barton. But before I go, I must find out for sure.

  ‘Caroline,’ I whisper again. Her scent makes me dizzy.

  ‘Nick,’ she murmurs.

  She remembers my name! The name she refused to use before and which has not been used by anyone in years. I am absurdly happy. I will do anything, anything for this woman, run through fire for her sweet sake . . . ‘Caroline, I love you.’

  What? Where the devil did that come from? I start back in horror and she tumbles off the bench, landing on her bonnet – the one that has received rough treatment as a bait basket – in a flurry of lawn and petticoats, swearing mightily.

  ‘What the devil are you doing, Congrevance?’ She scrambles to her feet, pushing me away when I attempt to help her. ‘Hell and damnation, I could have broken my neck. Are you a complete imbecile? What the hell are you about, creeping up on me and – and – mauling me so? Am I not safe anywhere here from fools and idiots and lechers who do nothing but look into my bosom?’

  ‘Madam, I—’