Gentlemen and Players

by Frances Vernon

  ‘But you’ve always opened it before,’ said Lavinia, frowning.

  ‘Yes, darling, but it does stick sometimes – no, here we are. Say bravo, Lavinia. Look, there’s the inscription.’

  ‘Is it twenty-four-carat gold?’ said Laurence.

  ‘I doubt it. Now let’s see if we can open the picture.’ He scraped at the catch and broke his nail. The children looked at the bright miniature of the young colonel to whom the watch had been presented for great valour at Balaclava, and Laurence asked questions about him, as he always did.

  ‘The works!’ laughed Sophia.

  ‘Yes!’ said Lavinia. At last Edwin, wheezing, opened the last section of the watch and displayed the intricate, shining works, studded with jewels which looked like rubies and sapphires. He explained to the children what made the watch tick. When it was shut up, and they had been allowed to feel the gold and enamel and glass casing of the watch it was time for them to go upstairs again. Lavinia sat down on Sophia’s footstool.

  ‘Why can’t I come too?’

  ‘Because you’re only five and you haven’t been invited, darling,’ said Edwin.

  ‘I want to see the New Year in.’

  ‘When you are ten,’ he replied, picking her up and taking her out of the room, ‘you can stay up and see in the twentieth century. Think of that, nineteen-hundred.’ Laurence and Sophia followed them.

  ‘But that’s twice as old as I am now …’

  The voices faded and Sophia came back.

  ‘Well, Susan, are they very spoiled?’ she said.

  ‘Only in such a way as to make them happier,’ said Susan, smiling. ‘I would call them indulged, not spoilt.’

  ‘That’s a fine distinction,’ said Sarah. ‘Worthy of a great-aunt!’

  Susan laughed and said she supposed she must look one, as she supported her fan like a dowager.

  ‘I think I will stay here,’ said Sarah suddenly.

  ‘Now, Sarah,’ said Edwin from the doorway.

  ‘Don’t tell me I am talking nonsense,’ she said.

  ‘Would I ever do such a thing? But my dear Sarah, you know what a time it took you to get ready. You can’t want to waste all that effort.’

  ‘You’ll enjoy it when you get there, and that violet is very becoming,’ said Sophia.

  Sarah stared. ‘You know it’s not,’ she said, and turned to look at her face and shoulders in the mirror.

  ‘Possibly the sleeves are a mistake,’ said Susan, whose sleeves were not fashionable, with enormous puffed shoulders, but full and loose, ending below the elbow, ‘but that’s hardly a reason for not going to a party.’

  ‘It is an excellent reason when one has nothing else to wear.’

  ‘This is stage-fright,’ said Edwin, patting her shoulder. He wondered whether to give her a very small drink.

  ‘I’m going upstairs,’ said Sarah, and left the room as Edwin put his hand on the brandy decanter.

  ‘She’ll come, don’t worry, she’s only seeking attention,’ said Edwin. ‘You two shouldn’t have made any comment just now. That was exactly what she wanted: fuss.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Susan.

  ‘You’re arrogant and bossy, my love,’ yawned Sophia.

  In her bedroom Sarah sat down at the mirror and started retouching her face. She was almost forty but without her thick make-up she looked much younger: like an exhausted, sickly woman of twenty-five or thirty.

  ‘Please pour me a drink,’ she said to her maid and watched, smiling, as Vickers took out a bottle from the inside pocket of a sable coat in the wardrobe and poured an inch of spirit into her toothmug. ‘He really doesn’t know, you know,’ she said.

  ‘Of course not, my lady.’

  ‘You won’t give me any more, will you?’

  ‘No, my lady.’

  Sarah laughed. ‘I really do look like an ageing demi-mondaine,’ she said to her reflection. ‘That’s what I am, Vickers: a lady of a half world.’

  ‘You know my views, my lady,’ said the maid, folding up a nightdress.

  ‘You are severe,’ said Sarah.

  Sarah now spent a great deal of time thinking about and studying her appearance, although she hardly ever bothered to improve it. She ran her little stiff fingers through her curls, which were quite untouched by grey, and asked Vickers whether she ought still to wear them in the old style: loose and collar-bone length, with a violet Alice band.

  While Vickers replied, Sarah held an imaginary conversation with herself. She spoke to her reflection, which did not reply. She knew very well that she was doing this and she smiled about it, because she knew she was not mad. She spoke about her real life: ‘You are Sarah. You are sitting in a cold bedroom, with your devoted handmaiden, on New Year’s Eve. It is grey dreary Bloomsbury and the year will soon be 1895. Downstairs your sister and your brother-in-law, who control your sordid life, are drinking brandy or barleywater, alternately laughing at, and sighing over you. Your life is profoundly sordid. You sit, drinking gin in secret, from a cracked glass, and you can only do so because your maid is so devoted to you. You are you, you are Sarah, and you are talking to yourself because there is no one you can talk to and there never will be. Here you sit, conducting a monologue while Vickers keeps her eye upon the cracked glass of gin and water and fiddles with your clothes. It is cold in the bedroom and soon you will be forced by your sisters and your brother-in-law to attend a ball, a real ball for people who can talk. You are a lady of a half world, you live in twilight. Beneath the brave cake of paint on your face your skin is rotten, yellow and liver-marked, yet smooth as a girl’s, swollen with corruption. Your eyes are sunken and your pale sad mouth is slack. You are dissipated by your profoundly sordid life and yet you have never lived, and this is precisely the appearance you present. You are waiting. It is almost ten o’clock and soon you will be fetched, and taken to the ball. You have a new gown and new shoes to wear, but your stockings are torn. You are putting blacking above your sunken eyes and you are staring at your empty, cracked glass of gin and water. You are rinsing your mouth with lavender water in order that your brother-in law shall catch no odour. It is cold, it is lonely, it is silent, it is Bloomsbury, London, it is nearly 1895.’

  This was the scene. Sarah had deliberately failed to make romance by mentioning Gabriel Morrison, about whom she still thought.

  On the stroke of ten Edwin shouted up the stairs to her as she had known he would, and she got quite gaily to her feet.

  The New Year ball was being given by the Countess of Mandesford at Mandesford House off Grosvenor Square. Lady Mandesford had been a close friend of Susan’s twelve years before and still wrote in reply to Susan’s letters. She had invited her when she heard that she would be spending New Year in London, and to oblige Susan had included the Sacheverells and Sarah in the invitation. It was to be a very large affair and they would scarcely be noticed, and in addition Lady Mandesford liked Dr Sacheverell, who some years before had been her own physician.

  They took a four-wheeler from Tavistock Square. Susan thought that neither of her sisters was conscious of the fact that theirs would be the only hackney to draw up at the door of Mandesford House among the crested carriages. None of them had been to such a party for many years. ‘It’s bound to be a dreadful squash,’ said Sophia, as she had said of all gatherings when she was a debutante. She was dressed very strikingly, severely as usual, in black and silver. ‘Caroline Mandesford was never one of your most fascinating friends, Susan.’

  ‘It was very good of her to invite us all,’ said Susan. ‘I’m sure I shall enjoy it, at least. Good heavens, I’ve just thought – Thomas will be there. How one does forget that he’s grown up.’

  ‘I have not seen him since 1887,’ said Sarah, ‘the late spring of 1887.’

  ‘Powder your noses, girls,’ said Edwin, ‘we’re nearly there.’

  The ballroom looked just the same as other ballrooms they had seen, although the women’s clothes were different. ‘Dearest Susan, do you ne
ver change?’ sighed Lady Mandesford, kissing her, and looking at her dress not at her face.

  ‘No, Caroline, there’s no call to do so in the country.’

  ‘Oh, Susan, you were always so droll. It is good to see you.’

  A few feet away Sarah had found Thomas. ‘Do you remember me?’ she was saying in her high, quiet, yet breathless voice. ‘I am your eldest half-sister, Sarah Templecombe, the one who ran away from her husband. Dear me, he might be here tonight.’

  ‘No he’s not,’ said Thomas, staring. ‘It’s good to see you.’ He had never used her Christian name to her face because he had never known her well.

  Ten yards away there was a man whom Susan, smiling at her chatting hostess, abruptly recognised as Gabriel Morrison. His soft dark hair had grown thin and was receding, all his flesh had sagged, and he had a small paunch and incipient dewlaps, although he was not yet in his thirties. Susan first recognised him by his expression and his lazy movements. She had long decided that the worst possible thing would be for Sarah to meet him again, and now replying in monosyllables to Lady Mandesford’s questions, she tried to decide whether it would be worse for her to see him grown ugly, than to see him as the charming boy. Gazing she waited for Sarah to turn, see him, recognise him, and speak.

  ‘Oh dear, how I do hate having to invite plain girls, and do something about them,’ Lady Mandesford was saying. ‘You were always so good at encouraging wallflowers, Susan, do please, please, come and chat to that dreary girl. It’s too awful, she’s a little bluestocking – a great big bluestocking, I should say – and believe it or not she has a devoted admirer. She won’t look at anyone else, she wants to marry him (and really nothing could be more suitable), but Colonel Campbell – that’s her father, you know – won’t allow it, although she hasn’t a hope of making a better match, she’s quite penniless. Only her father objects to old Mr Wood’s being in trade, although really one would almost take him for a gentleman and, in any case, what does it matter nowadays?’

  She took Susan over to the wall where a big-boned, round-faced girl with pale ginger hair and spectacles was sitting.

  ‘Isn’t it ridiculous? My dear, let me introduce you to Mrs Potter. Mrs Potter, Miss Clementina Campbell.’ Lady Mandesford disappeared. Susan could no longer see either Sarah or Gabriel.

  ‘She never stops talking, does she?’ said Miss Campbell.

  Craning her neck, Susan smiled and said something friendly, though the girl had been impertinent. A moment later she added, ‘Just so, Miss Cameron,’ then blushed, and laughed a little, and turned determinedly towards her. She had to talk, because the girl said almost nothing else. Susan’s mind was so much occupied that she could not think of a way of returning to the centre of the ballroom.

  As the orchestra struck up, Sarah saw – and recognised – Gabriel Morrison. She stood quite still, with her fan held in front of her mouth, waiting for him to turn round and see her. She knew that if he recognised her, it would be by her hair and her tiny size, and the thickness of the paint on her face, and they would be equal, for he would think her as ugly as she thought him. Her little black eyes were very wide and she could see people glancing at her curiously. He did not turn round. She moved before anyone said, ‘Lady Henry, are you quite well?’, or Edwin or Susan saw her and thought her about to make a scene. When she was within touching distance of Gabriel, who was chatting to a pretty girl near the wall, she remembered her conversation with Thomas.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ she said.

  He looked at her, and a quivering smile broke out on his small mouth.

  ‘I’m Sarah. I was your mistress – very briefly, I confess.’ It was the best thing she could have said, for he coloured violently. ‘It was six years ago,’ she added. Several people had heard.

  ‘My dear lady – you – you must be unwell,’ said Gabriel. He could get no further, and Sarah thought that he had not recognised her, because he had not called her-Lady Henry. She had not expected him to use Sarah. She thought also that he was angry, and might actually strike her. His hands had not changed: they were still strong, smooth, and huge.

  ‘Poor dear Gabriel. How glad I am that I never was in love with you.’ She had thought those two sentences out properly and as she spoke her voice rose sharply, and faltered. He did not hit her and as someone laid a very gentle hand on her shoulder she fell to the floor. She had never before pretended to faint. At least twenty people had seen and heard her.

  Her brother Thomas ran, trembling, to fetch Susan and Edwin Sacheverell. He found Edwin, but not Susan, who came up afterwards, to see Sarah spread out on the floor. Edwin picked her up in his arms, which were stocky and wiry and warm. Her eyelids shivered. ‘I’m taking her home,’ he said. ‘You and Sophia must take a hansom.’

  ‘She should have brandy,’ Susan said to him, fanning herself.

  ‘I’ll see to it.’ People made way for him.

  Sophia appeased them. ‘Good heavens, Gabriel, has my sister been making a scene?’ she said, wide-eyed like Sarah. Susan, looking from Gabriel’s face to Thomas’s to Sophia’s wondered whether Edwin would find this amusing. Sophia went away again.

  Susan stayed another half-hour at the ball, wondering. She asked Sophia to return with her to Tavistock Square but Sophia was busy talking to old friends. She was very angry when Susan drew her aside and told her not to mention the scene, or giggle about it, or confirm what Sarah had said.

  Susan reached Tavistock Square after midnight and found Edwin in his study with a glass of brandy in front of him. He looked unhappy, but when he saw her he rose and shouted, so that she jumped: ‘Don’t you think you might at least have brought my wife with you, if you didn’t have the decency to stay and play chaperone?’

  Susan drew breath. ‘Although Sophia was busy looking up her old flirts, Edwin, which is why she hasn’t accompanied me, she’s hardly of an age to need a chaperone.’

  ‘You two,’ said Edwin. ‘Your prurient love of idiotic drama is so absolutely limitless … my God, why I put up with you both constantly in my house I have no idea.’

  She had never seen him in a rage before. Her eyes gleaming, she said coolly, ‘And what have you done to Sarah that you don’t want me to know about?’

  ‘Done to her? I have beaten her!’

  ‘What?

  ‘You heard me. If anyone was ever asking for it, it was her. She tried to stop me by whining that she was mad. Her utter shamelessness is beyond everything and as for you …’

  ‘God in heaven,’ whispered Susan. ‘Well, all I can do is see what can be done for her as, obviously, you can hardly bind up her wounds.’

  ‘Do none of you ever stop play-acting?’ he roared. ‘Of course there are no wounds,’ he said. ‘I merely boxed her ears soundly and shook her until her teeth rattled. It’s the only way to deal with hysterical women, it’s well known.’

  ‘My poor sisters,’ said Susan. ‘What it must be like to belong to you, I really can’t imagine. Or rather, I can, only too well.’

  ‘Yes, dear Susan, I know.’

  She closed the door very softly behind her and went up to Sarah’s bedroom. ‘No, madam,’ said Vickers, stepping outside as soon as she knocked. ‘I am taking care of her ladyship. She will be quite all right presently but she cannot see anyone.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Vickers, but I must …’

  ‘No, Susan!’ screamed Sarah. ‘Please – leave me alone!’

  The door was closed, and Susan was left outside, aware of being the only calm person in the family.

  *

  Within an hour Sarah was perfectly calm. It was true that her brother-in-law had only shaken her and boxed her ears, but being assaulted, after six years of no one’s touching her either violently or tenderly, had made her quite hysterical. Vickers did not go to Edwin for a sedative, but let her cry herself into exhaustion, and then gave her a little gin when she asked for it.

  She lay on her bed, with her eyes held wide open and a candle burning beside her, unab
le to move because when she did so pain shot into her head. Since being carried away from the ballroom she had not, until now, thought directly about Gabriel Morrison. She was wondering, almost academically, what she would have done and felt had he removed her from the scene and cuffed her and shouted at her and shaken her. Repeatedly, Sarah saw the young Gabriel doing this; and once she reminded herself that he was still young, and looked it, but young and balding and fat; and then she shut out the picture for, though she had not been in love with him when she saw him at the ball, she was so now. Edwin had told her that she had never been mad for love of anyone.

  She fell asleep at last, knowing that in the morning everyone would come and talk to her, and Edwin would apologise gently but eagerly for beating her, insisting that she did not love, and calling her not mad but merely ridiculous. When he did so the next day, she made him promise never again to treat her as a madwoman and after that, except in her letters to Susan, she returned to being calm and distant and silent in public, and being in love with Gabriel Morrison in secret until, in her middle seventies, Sarah went through another phase of reviling his memory.

  CHAPTER 22

  FLORA COMES

  Nicholas sat in the library in his wheelchair, with the blinds drawn against the sunlight although it was the end of October. His broken hip was aching. There were pince-nez on his fleshy nose and he held a book up to his face. One mottled, blunt-nailed hand fingered his grey beard. The doorbell, a great brass bell which had been in the old house, rang down the corridor. Nicholas did not lay down the book.

  The front doors were swung open and Flora Pagett came into the house on her husband’s arm. She was just eighteen and very pretty, small and plump with chestnut hair and blue-grey eyes and a creamy skin. She had nine hundred thousand dollars and had been brought to England by her mother, Mrs Ulysses Delaney, in the autumn of the previous year, when she had learned of Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt’s betrothal to the Duke of Marlborough. Flora Delaney had married Thomas Pagett, the richest and most handsome of her suitors three months after first meeting him, at the beginning of the Little Season of 1896, at St Margaret’s, Westminster. They had just returned from their honeymoon in Monte Carlo.