by T E Kinsey
I arrived in the library some minutes later, having taken the long way round via the kitchen. There I had prepared a fresh pot of coffee and had snaffled a selection of Mrs Ruddle’s splendid-looking petits-fours, just in case the promised Belgian chocolate proved insufficient for their appetite for sweetmeats.
I placed the tray on the low table around which the four ladies sat in easy chairs. There was a small amount of fiddle-faddling while I rearranged the brandy decanter and glasses to accommodate the fresh coffee, but they dutifully ignored me, and their conversation continued uninterrupted. I withdrew, and divided my attention between the contents of the bookshelves and the chatter of the ladies as I waited patiently and invisibly in a shadowy corner of the large room.
Miss Titmus had been quite quiet for most of the evening. But she had already exuberantly sampled some of the finer vintages from Lord Riddlethorpe’s cellar, and in this more intimate group of close friends, she was gaining in confidence and volubility. She had begun eagerly and earnestly questioning Lady Hardcastle about her life in China, Burma, India, and the palaces of Europe. Lady Hardcastle, never one to hide her light under a bushel when there was an attentive audience, was happy to oblige with tales of intrigue, espionage, and skulduggery, at least half of which were at least half true.
Miss Titmus hung on her every word, mouth agape, and actually shrieked at the end of a story that had seen the pair of us evading arrest by the secret police of an unfriendly European power while disguised as sailors.
‘Oh my goodness!’ she said, clutching her hand to her mouth. ‘You didn’t! No, really. Did you? You didn’t. Goodness!’
Mrs Beddows broke off from leafing through a magazine to shoot a withering glance at her old friend.
‘Really, Titmouse, do calm down. She’s teasing you. Of course she didn’t. Real people don’t do such things. Honestly, you can be such a credulous chump sometimes.’
‘Steady on, Roz,’ said Lady Lavinia, putting a hand on Mrs Beddows’s arm. ‘I’d not be so quick to judge if I were you. Edmond has known Emily’s brother for simply aeons, and he always hinted that there was more to his little sister than met the eye.’ She paused and looked around the room. ‘I say, Miss Armstrong. What are you doing lurking over there? Come and join us for a moment.’
I gave up my perusal of the pleasingly eclectic collection of books, and moved across the room to stand behind Lady Hardcastle’s chair.
Lady Lavinia looked up at me from across the small table. ‘Your mistress has been spinning quite a yarn over here. What’s your version of events? Can you corroborate any of it?’
‘Of course she can,’ said Mrs Beddows dismissively. ‘She’s her maid. It’s more than her job’s worth to contradict her meal ticket.’
‘Really, Roz,’ said Lady Lavinia with increasing exasperation. ‘Must you be so beastly all the time?’
As was so often the case in public, I found myself in something of an awkward position. While the essence of the tale was true, most of the details were not. But, of course, I didn’t want to give Mrs Beddows the satisfaction of hearing me point this out. We had been abusing the hospitality of a foreign government by poking our noses into their affairs. However, their vaunted ‘secret police’ had been a corrupt shower of indolent duffers, more interested in feathering their own nests than in protecting state secrets. In fact, the danger had come from a gang of local smugglers who had decided that our snooping was a threat to their collective livelihoods. They had resolved to remove that threat by shuffling us, discreetly but permanently, from this mortal coil. We had escaped disguised not as sailors, but as policemen, which I always felt made for a much more exciting story. Lady Hardcastle steadfastly refused to remember this part, though, having honed her version of events over many retellings into a tale to make ladies shriek. In less belligerent company, I might have allowed myself some sport by correcting her many factual errors, but under the circumstances I felt disinclined to undermine her.
‘The events unfolded much as Lady Hardcastle has explained them,’ I said. ‘If anything, she has understated both the danger we found ourselves in and the ingenuity of our escape.’
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, I thought. That should cover the ‘she got everything wrong but it’s true nonetheless’ side of things without fibbing and, more crucially, without leaving an opening for Mrs Beddows to bully Miss Titmus any further.
‘Ha!’ said Lady Lavinia triumphantly. ‘I told you not to be so hasty, Roz. I say, would it make you frightfully uncomfortable to pull up a chair and join us, Miss Armstrong? I’m sure you have a wealth of stories to tell, too.’
‘Oh, do,’ said Miss Titmus enthusiastically.
Mrs Beddows said nothing, and gave her attention to a minute examination of one of the seams of her glove.
‘Looks like you’re on, Flo,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Pull up a pew and settle in.’ She shuffled her own chair to one side to make room for me between herself and Miss Titmus.
‘Splendid,’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘Would you care for a brandy?’
‘Thank you, my lady, I should like that very much,’ I said. I helped myself to a glass before hefting another comfortable chair into the circle.
And then the interrogation began. Lady Hardcastle and I faced an onslaught of questions from Lady Lavinia and Miss Titmus that might ordinarily have been uncomfortable. But it was accompanied by such enthusiasm, such glee, so many ‘ooh’s, ‘ahh’s, and ‘oh, my goodness’s, that it was impossible not to get swept along by it all. Nearly impossible. Mrs Beddows, though careful not to be rude, seemed to be working hard to maintain an air of unimpressed aloofness so that we might be certain that she was above such shenanigans.
Over the course of the next hour, we gave them the edited highlights of our lives of public service, starting with Lady Hardcastle’s recruitment while at Cambridge. We moved on through her espionage exploits while on foreign postings with her husband, Sir Roderick – while the authorities kept a close eye on the visiting diplomat, his socialite wife was free to snoop unobserved. I had travelled with them to Shanghai as her lady’s maid, but I had been recruited as her assistant while they were there. We shared tales of a few of the more thrilling adventures we’d had before the horror of Sir Roderick’s murder forced us to flee. We told them more of China, of Burma, of India, and of the backstreets of London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin.
By the time we brought them to the present day, by way of murders, missing trophies, and haunted public houses, I thought Miss Titmus might burst. I’m not certain I’ve heard anyone say ‘Golly!’ quite so many times before or since.
‘No wonder you two seem more like chums,’ she said, once she had caught her breath. ‘What lives you’ve led.’
‘What lives, indeed,’ said Mrs Beddows sardonically.
Lady Hardcastle was undaunted (or oblivious – it can be hard to tell after she’s had a glass or two) and chose instead to redirect the conversation towards the three friends. ‘And now you know all about us,’ she said, ‘but we know so little of you. I mean, take you for instance, Lavinia. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t even know you existed until the other day.’
Lady Lavinia laughed. ‘Surely not.’
‘On my honour,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Harry has known Fishy for twenty years or more – heavens, I’ve known Fishy for twenty years or more – but neither of them ever mentioned that he had a sister.’
‘Brothers, eh?’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘Useless articles.’
‘Quite so, dear. So tell all. How did you three meet?’
‘We were at school together,’ said Miss Titmus eagerly. ‘Weren’t we, girls?’
‘We were,’ said Lady Lavinia.
‘I dreamed of being allowed to go to school,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I was so jealous of Harry when he went away. You must have been among the first.’
‘Pioneers,’ said Lady Lavinia with a laugh. ‘That was us. But I wouldn’t be too envious if I were you. I suspect you and your g
overness had a much less . . . testing time of it.’
‘I’m not sure my string of increasingly exasperated governesses would agree, dear. Was it awful? Tom Brown in petticoats?’
‘All that and more besides,’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘But we survived. Got through it together, didn’t we, girls?’
‘Bonds were forged,’ drawled Mrs Beddows.
‘I, for one, am jolly glad they were,’ said Miss Titmus. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you two.’
‘Were there midnight feasts and japes and pranks?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.
‘And beatings and cold baths and cross-country runs,’ said Mrs Beddows.
‘Oh, Roz, you old surly-boots,’ chided Miss Titmus. ‘We had plenty of fun.’
‘Did we? I must have forgotten.’
‘Take no notice of Roz,’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘She likes to portray herself as some manner of ice queen, immune from the petty pleasures of mere mortals, but she’s a poppet really.’
Mrs Beddows gave an ironic smile.
‘Oh, oh, Jake, do you have that photograph of us?’ asked Miss Titmus excitedly.
‘I really don’t know,’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘If it’s here at all, it will be on the piano in the drawing room.’
‘Would you mind if we showed it to Emily?’
‘If you can find it, we shall endure the embarrassment. I’m sure Emily likes a chuckle.’
Miss Titmus scampered off in search of the photograph.
The next few minutes weren’t exactly awkward, but neither were they the most comfortable of my life. Lady Lavinia tried gamely to keep the cheerful chatter going, and Lady Hardcastle joined in with her customary effortless charm, but Mrs Beddows just stared into her brandy glass, saying nothing and looking like she’d rather be in any other company but ours.
It was something of a relief when Miss Titmus clattered back into the room clutching a photograph in a silver frame. She was not alone.
‘So this is where you’ve been hiding,’ said Lord Riddlethorpe as he followed her in. ‘Come on, chaps, they’re in here.’
Harry, Mr Waterford, Herr Kovacs, and Uncle Algy meandered into the library and began moving chairs to join our group.
‘Come on, girls,’ said Lord Riddlethorpe, ‘budge up. Make room there.’
We shuffled our chairs to accommodate the gentlemen, who had brought glasses with them and were helping themselves to brandy as they settled down.
‘We thought you’d all gone off to bed,’ said Lord Riddlethorpe. ‘We were waiting for you in the drawing room.’
‘You duffer,’ said his sister. ‘I told you we were coming in here.’
‘You say that as though you imagine I might listen to anything you say.’
‘That’s scarcely my problem, is it? We were sitting in here all along, having a chinwag.’
‘Us too,’ he said. ‘But in the drawing room. We could have wagged our chins together. I so seldom see you these days.’
‘Poor Fishy,’ she said. ‘But you’d have been talking about business or motor cars or some such inconsequential drivel, and we had much more important things to discuss.’
Mrs Beddows snorted so forcefully that it might have been possible to imagine that a horse had strayed into the library.
‘I bet I can guess what the “important things” were,’ said Harry, looking at his own sister. ‘I’d wager Emily has been yarning.’
‘A little,’ said Lady Hardcastle, poking out her tongue. ‘But that was ages ago. We’ve moved on to talking about school. Well, the ladies have. I wasn’t lucky enough to go to school, unlike other members of my family.’
‘I’ve told you, Emily, you really didn’t miss much,’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘Show her the photo, Helen. Let her see for herself what she was spared.’
Miss Titmus presented the framed photograph as though it were an object of worship, while Lady Hardcastle and I craned to get a better look. Around a dozen girls in dark skirts and white blouses were arranged around a large trophy. Those in the front were sitting cross-legged with cricket bats across their knees.
Lady Hardcastle laughed. ‘You were in the school cricket team?’ she asked delightedly.
‘Evanshaw’s School for Girls First XI, 1882,’ said Miss Titmus proudly. ‘Winners of the Japheth Fothersdyke Memorial Trophy.’
‘Japheth Fothersdyke, eh?’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘That well-known . . . ?’
‘A deceased local mill owner,’ said Mrs Beddows. ‘It seems our parents all decided that London would be too decadently metropolitan, Geneva too exotic, Paris too frivolous . . . and so they packed us off to some godforsaken granite fortress on the Yorkshire Moors, home of dark satanic mills and their long-dead, dark satanic owners.’
‘It was sandstone, dear,’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘And it was a former manor house, not a fortress. And Japheth Fothersdyke was a fair-haired church warden.’
‘Bleak, forbidding, and bally awful,’ said Mrs Beddows.
‘Be that as it may,’ continued Lady Lavinia, ‘much emphasis was placed by Mr and Mrs Evanshaw upon the value of healthy outdoor pursuits, among which was cricket, at which, by lucky chance, we excelled.’
‘Best days of my life,’ said Miss Titmus wistfully.
‘Doesn’t say a great deal for the rest of your life,’ said Mrs Beddows.
Lady Hardcastle produced her lorgnette and peered more closely at the photograph. ‘Let me see, then,’ she said. ‘What do you reckon, Flo? Who’s who?’
I leaned in and studied the faces. To me, they just looked like a crowd of anonymous posh schoolgirls, flushed faces padded with varying amounts of puppy fat. They wore their hair in the same style, and there seemed little to distinguish one from another, but Lady Hardcastle, as always, was able to see more than I.
‘That’s you, Lavinia,’ she said, pointing to a fair-haired girl at the back. ‘And Roz is next to you.’ She pointed again. ‘And . . . Oh, that one’s Helen,’ she said, triumphantly pointing at a third, plump, mousey-looking girl.
‘Spot on,’ said Miss Titmus with a smile. ‘You have a good eye for faces.’
‘It makes her quite the portrait artist,’ said Harry. ‘She has a wonderful way of seeing the essence of a chap. You should get her to sketch you before she goes.’
‘Oh, would you, Emily?’ said Miss Titmus. ‘And I shall take photographs of you all. We can show them together.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Let’s do that. And who’s this girl between you and Lavinia? She looks a formidable sportswoman.’
We all looked more closely at the photograph. Sure enough, between Miss Titmus and Lady Lavinia stood a rather beautiful girl with dark hair and the most beguiling eyes. For an uncomfortable while, no answer came.
‘That’s Katy Burkinshaw,’ offered Miss Titmus eventually. ‘She—’
‘That’s a story for another time, dear,’ interrupted Lady Lavinia. She took the photograph from Lady Hardcastle and passed it to Mr Waterford. ‘What do you think, Monty? Weren’t we just utterly utter?’
He laughed. ‘A formidable-looking team. What say you, Viktor? Do you think we could have taken them on?’
Herr Kovacs took the photo and examined it closely. ‘I’m not sure I could “take anyone on” at cricket, old chap. It’s not a game quite so beloved by the mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire. To tell the truth, I’m a little surprised to find girls playing the game. I thought it was a sport for boys and men?’
‘It’s fallen out of favour with the ladies of late,’ said Miss Titmus, ‘but it was all the rage in the eighties. I wish we could bring it back. Did you play, Emily?’
‘I’m afraid not, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘A little tennis, perhaps, and I’ve been dragged into more than one game of croquet, but only socially.’
‘Oh,’ said Miss Titmus deflatedly. ‘What about you, Miss Armstrong?’
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘I was more of a rugby girl.’
‘Good lord!’ said Lord Riddlethorpe. ‘Rugge
r? Really?’
‘Really,’ I said with a smile. ‘Fastest wing three-quarter in the district, me.’
Lord Riddlethorpe laughed. ‘Well I never. But you’re so tiny.’
‘Don’t let that fool you,’ said Harry. ‘Swift and deadly, our Flo. I’d not want to try to take her on if she were coming at me at pace.’
‘They played ladies rugby in . . . Where was it . . . Aberdare?’ said Mr Waterford.
‘No, I played on the boys’ team until they banned me,’ I said.
The men laughed.
‘Too good for them, eh?’ said Lord Riddlethorpe.
‘They claimed it was because the laws didn’t allow girls to play,’ I said. ‘But I consoled myself by choosing to believe your explanation.’
They all laughed again.
Herr Kovacs was still scrutinizing the photograph.
‘Don’t hog it, Viktor,’ said Lord Riddlethorpe. ‘Let everyone have a bat.’
Almost reluctantly, Herr Kovacs relinquished the photograph and let the other gentlemen have a look. Mr Waterford smiled as he flicked his gaze between the photograph and the grown-up versions of the girls sitting before him, but when it was Harry’s turn, he lingered longer on the face of the present-day Lady Lavinia, and only reluctantly gave up the photograph and returned to the conversation.
‘Now that we’re all together, and now that we three have been thoroughly embarrassed by images of the gawky girls we once were,’ said Lady Lavinia as she handed the photograph back to Miss Titmus, ‘what say we play some games? It’s been a wretched day, and our spirits are badly in need of lifting.’
‘Exactly what I was saying, m’dear,’ said Uncle Algy. ‘St Uguzo’s Holy Cheese, anyone?’
‘No, Uncle Algy!’ said Lady Lavinia firmly. ‘Something much less bawdy, if you please.’
There followed a brief debate about which parlour game they should play. Between them, they knew a great many, and I decided that I shouldn’t be missed if I were to leave them to it. It was one thing being invited to join in a conversation, but I felt I ought to spare everyone the embarrassment of having to try to accommodate me in one of their games. I whispered a quiet goodnight to Lady Hardcastle and slipped away unnoticed.