An Indelicate Situation (The Weymouth Trilogy) (7 page)

Sadly, Maggie did not receive this
communication
with quite
as much
gratification
as
Mrs William could have hoped
for
. Indeed, it is probably true to say that she felt very little gratification at
i
t at all and that the only gratification
that
she did feel was as a result of the opportunity it would give her for sharing an evening with
Mr Wright
– not a reason for his wife to feel contented with
,
to be sure
. No. Rather than feeling gratified, Maggie
was feeling distinctly uneasy
and, on balance,
would much rather have avoided the invitation if she could. Despite her education she had never felt quite at ease with ‘quality’. Perhaps some early put
-
downs, resulting from a somewhat insolent air of superiority over anyone with a background in ‘trade’, had had their effect on an impressionable young
mind
. O
r perhaps it had wanted another full year at Mrs Whitemind’s educational establishment for
superior
young ladies in which to pe
r
fect the ladylike art of being at ease in whatever situation one found oneself. Either way, and for whatever reason, Maggie had
never
learned to revel in the formalities of a full dinner with the ease
for
which she
would
most certainly have wished,
an omission which was perhaps further exacerbated by her current inferior position in society
– a position of which she was herself most acutely aware
. S
o
it was in some real trepidation that
she
finally
retired to her
room in
order to get herself ready for her ordeal.

Perhaps she should have felt more comfortable once she had met her
enforced
companions
, for it turned out that
Mr Robert
son was so little used to dining in company of any sort
,
genteel or not
,
that he had a full year’s
worth of conversation readily
t
o
hand with which to
regale
her the moment she was introduced to him, whilst
Mr Fred
dy
Staveley
, who would be on her other side at table,
was perhaps the least frightening individual that a governess could ever hope to meet. Tall and burly, with
a broad chest and even broader
feet and hands, he must have found the cramped conditions at sea
to be
particularly uncomfortable
for want of being able to stand upright anywhere
on a ship
other than
entirely
out on deck. Perhaps he had discovered this for himself, for though he was tall he did not hold himself
at all
erect. Rather, he held himself in what Maggie could only think of as a rather self effacing stoop – a stoop which gave him the unfortunate air of being for ever just in the
act
of talking to a little dog and offering it a bone. His shock of straw
-
blond hair topped a round, jovial but oddly vacant
-
looking face – a face which displayed a ready grin, a grin which appeared, often as not, to mock himself rather than anybody else.
Even worse, it became immediately apparent as soon as he started to speak that Mr
Staveley
was possessed of a most unfortunate speech impediment which caused him to st
umble
quite regularly
and, in particular, the more animated he became
,
and
most embarrassingly over his
‘
ps
’
and
‘
bs
’
as well as
many
of his
‘
ms
’
.
He was speaking just then to Mr Berkeley and a rather arch
-
looking young lady in a most exquisite ivory silk gown
and sparkling diamond brooch. The somewhat stumbling discourse appeared to revolve around
his acquaintance with the p
rivateer Captain who had so obligingly brought him home.
Had she stopped to think of it at all Maggie would have put Mr
Staveley
down immediately as a kind of risible but harmless buffoon. However, she had not stopped to think of it, for no sooner had she appeared
downstairs
than the dinner bell was sounded and, the introductions complete, she found herself being accompanied by the
obliging Mr Rob
ert
son
and fi
nding her place in the
dining room next door.

Despite being at leas
t minimally acquainted with several
of the guests at the
table – Mr and Mrs Berkeley, Captain
and Mrs Wright, Mrs Staveley – none of whom could exactly be called frightening at all, Maggie was
feeling
strangely
ill at ease as she took her
lowly place at the table with her partner. To be fair,
her particular acquaintance were
generally
situated at
a
rather
inconvenient
distance in
the more regal
regions
of
the table. T
he other guests
opposite
–
the arch
-
looking young lady, who turned out to be Miss
Brewer,
together with her papa
,
who were, apparently, local dignitaries
,
Mr and Mrs Buxton
,
some other
friends
– could reasonably have been expected to appear somewhat grand
. I
ndeed,
all the participants
were garbed in the most exquisite and obviously expensive finery imaginable
, albeit that the Buxtons
appeared much less conscious o
f
their
finery than the Brewers
and several of the others
did
. B
ut, other than Miss Brewer, who did come across as somewhat haughty
by dint of turning her elegant nose in the opposite direction if ever she happened to look Maggie’s way
, none of them really gave her any reason to feel other than comfortable as
she
removed her gloves for the meal
. Mind you, Mrs William had certainly done everything in her power to ensure that
all
he
r guests felt suitably overwhelmed
. The dinner was to consist of the full three courses, with a particularly splendid first course
of a watery disposition
which
consist
ed
of salmo
n-g
undy
, Yarmouth pie
, la matelote au vin de B
ordeaux
and a splendid selection of shellfish.
Maggie felt almost dazzled by the impressively shimmering array of cut crystal and polished silver which just then adorned the dining table
. A
fter all, she was not to know that the vast majority of it had been hired only that morning from
Mr Watson’s china
shop along the way
. This
was complem
ented by some equally dazzling,
if not exactly tasteful
,
Chelsea porcelain
plates and bowls. Luckily, though, she managed to drag her gaze away from these impressive symbols of grandeur in time to catch
Mrs Berkeley
’s
kind nod
s
and smile
s
from further up the table as
that lady
listened respectfully to
Mr Wright
’s rather one
-
sided conversation regarding the
tribulations involved in the
purchase of a new grandfather clock for the hall.
Not that Magg
ie could hear any of it, though
, for
Mrs William,
eating her food in quick little bursts which reminded Maggie forcibly of a rabbit,
delighted that her dining room should now hold the cream of society then to be found residing in Weymouth, was
loudly
dominating the conversation at the far end of the table and attempting – albeit not entirely successfully – to get Mr Buxton to agree that the fashion for sea
-
bathing
,
which she personally found
to be
faintly disgusting
,
was
surely contrary to the recognised will of God.

In spite of all this, f
or some reason best known to herself
,
Maggie found her agitation growing rather than diminish
ing as the first course was tackl
ed and
rapidly
consumed.
Mr Robert
son’s conversational ability, though formidable, was not sufficient to prevent him from stealing long moments of silence as he savoured his
Yarmouth pie
. Maggie could not help but wonder whether tonight’s meal might represent his main
source of nourishment
for the whole of the rest of the week. Certainly he gave all the appearance of it
s
being so, from the vast amounts of it w
hich were constantly heaped upo
n his plate.
In contrast, at her other side,
Mr
Staveley
’s conversational ability did not appear large
at all
and it was directed, in the main, towards his m
other
whom, to be fair to him, he had hardly seen for a year
or more and certainly since that lady’s
rather odd decision
to remove herself from London and set up home with her niece’s family down here in the wilds of Dorset. This left Maggie with far too much time on her hands – time
in which
to worry about which dishes to ask for, and how much food
to accept
from each; time to worry about dropping her food down her best gown and ruining it for a lifetime; time to worry about whether
Mr Wright
was noticing her, watching her, admiring her – and what impression, if he
were
doing, she had actually managed to make upon his heart.

So, having so much time to herself made her nervous. And i
n
all
her nervousness
and anxiety not to trouble her partner, engrossed as he was in
managing his pie
,
she managed
,
in an attempt to reach
the condiments
in front of her,
to catch her newly
-
filled wineglass
with her hand
and knock it
entirely
over
. T
he slow red stain crep
t
its way inexorably across the
table
cloth
in a reasonable
rep
lication
of a map of the world
. Sadly, the embarrassment elicited by this activity was apparently quite insufficient to satisfy her, for no sooner had she found the
cloth expertly dabbed
, the
glass replaced
and the claret
reinstated than she did the self same thing again. She could see William close his eyes and sigh. She did the same herself.
Only then did Mr
Staveley
appear to
notice it
.
Finding a
great
stain creeping
nefariously towards his left
arm and
imminently
threat
ening the whiteness of his
shirt cuffs
,
he
suddenly
let out a loud ‘Oh, damnation’,
effected a swift
leap backwards, knocking his chair quite over as he did so, followed the chair himself on its journey to the floor
,
ended up in a most inelegant heap, arms and legs akimbo in what, in another situation, might reasonably have been interpreted as a
n impression
of a dying fly, and threw what remained of his own glass of wine over his shoulder onto the
intricately patterned pale green, cream and apricot carpet
to his rear
.