Dorothy Eden (9 page)

Her sudden explosive happiness had to find a physical outlet. She spun round in the bouncing ball act that gave William a headache, then flung herself laughing into her father’s arms.

She noticed sadly that his right arm could not fold itself tightly round her.

It was a reminder that everything was not perfect, not full of hope…

“Come along, none of your smoodging,” Papa grumbled. “Let’s get down to business since you seem to have appointed yourself manager in my absence. Tomorrow I would like you to bring in the stocksheets for linen and damasks. We were low and I want to check orders. Those people in Dublin are a bit slow on deliveries. We might go to Boone’s in Limerick. And let me know if that line of French brocade is moving. It was priced a bit high for our customers, I fancy.”

“Then we must get richer customers.”

“Think you know it all, don’t you?”

“No. But I’ll learn. So that by the time my second son is old enough he’ll have a good inheritance. My first son will have to go into the army, I’m afraid. For the old General’s sake. You understand, don’t you, Papa? And after that I’ll have a daughter for myself.”

Papa gave his great guffaw.

“Gad, Bea, your boys may all be girls. All wanting expensive outfits at Bonnington’s. Bankrupting us. Better go now, love. I’m a bit tired. I’ll take a nap.”

He looked so relaxed and peaceful that Beatrice knew she had provided the right medicine. Earlier this morning William had looked like that, too, deeply relaxed, at ease.

It was wonderful to be a woman, to minister to the varying needs of men, to be full of this quiet power…

“Is this,” said William over the luncheon table, “to be a pattern of the future, dearest?”

“While Papa is ill, yes.” Beatrice’s voice was quietly firm. She would have preferred not to discuss the matter in front of Mrs Overton, who was already looking astonished and shocked, but perhaps it was as well to get an awkward task over.

William was giving his amiable smile. It was going to be very difficult ever to quarrel with him because he smiled most of the time. It made life civilised, certainly, but it also made the deeper places of his mind secret and unknowable, and Beatrice wanted to know every smallest thing about him. She was greedy for knowledge. She knew how his appearance, his voice, his humour, his gentleness, pleased her senses. She knew him physically, since the long beautiful night last night. Wasn’t that enough in the meantime? She must contain her greed.

“And how long do you think your father’s illness will last, dearest?”

“Perhaps two or three months. The doctor says recovery varies from one patient to another. But knowing Papa’s will to get well, it shouldn’t be too long.”

“Three months!” Mrs Overton was exclaiming, unable to keep silent any longer. “Beatrice, this simply won’t do. You have a husband and a house to run.”

“I gave Cook all the necessary orders before I left this morning,” Beatrice said. “Is there anything wrong with the food?”

“The fish is excellent,” said William. “Were you complaining, Mother?”

“You know very well that isn’t what I meant,” Mrs Overton said sharply. She didn’t share her son’s placid nature. She was quick, tense, outspoken, disapproving. She looked at Beatrice as if she were slightly inferior goods being offered to her for purchase by one of Bonnington’s saleswomen.

“You must realise, my dear, that as my son’s wife you have a position to keep up, social duties, people to meet, to be accepted by. How can you be hostess to someone to whom you might have sold a dozen yards of lace that day? I’m not exaggerating. This is a situation that could very well happen, and it would be horribly embarrassing.”

“Be quiet, Mother,” William said, his brown eyes dancing. He appeared to be enjoying himself.

“I won’t be quiet. Beatrice is young and unsophisticated and she must be told these things. I simply can’t let your marriage turn into a disaster, dear boy. Your wife going off to work, standing behind a shop counter. It would be scandalous. Preposterous. I’m surprised that you could be so unwomanly, Beatrice. And as for entertaining any hopes of being invited to a Royal Drawing Room, you could dismiss them at once.”

“I don’t want to visit the Palace,” Beatrice said. “On the contrary, I want it to visit us. I was telling Papa. It’s high time that at least some members of the royal family shopped with us. I intend to see that this happens.” She looked at Mrs Overton dabbing her lips with her table napkin (Bonnington’s best damask?) and repressed a sudden naughty desire to giggle. “Do you think that’s preposterous, William?”

She was deeply relieved that he hadn’t got the set stuffy look he had had earlier that morning. He now seemed to feel nothing but amusement.

“I think you’ll find, Bea dearest, that my mother is only worried that I am to be so plainly seen to be supported by my wife. This should have been an invisible side of our marriage. Although everyone knows it exists, of course. And if we’re happy about it, what does it matter what anyone else thinks? This is something you must realise, Mother.”

“It’s all so utterly
unsuitable
!” Mrs Overton exclaimed helplessly.

Beatrice was looking at William anxiously. “You are speaking the truth when you say you’re happy about it?”

“Oh, perfectly. Except that I will miss you when you’re at the shop,” he added courteously. “And this doesn’t make me an eccentric, Mother. It only means that I’m not a selfish demanding husband.”

He was a unique husband, Beatrice’s fond glance told him. And anyway, Mrs Overton had no need to be quite so scandalised. This was 1881 and women were emerging from the extremely sheltered life they had lived since Queen Victoria came to the throne and set her example of stifling domesticity to the nation. They were becoming famous writers, explorers, teachers, even doctors.

She wondered if her mother-in-law were aware of this fact.

But not shopkeepers, Mrs Overton would say. Trade! That was something unmentionable, like a nasty disease.

“Mother, don’t take it so seriously,” William said in his coaxing voice. “Bea has to do it, don’t you, dearest?”

Beatrice looked at him gratefully.

“How do you know?”

“Because I know your devotion to your father, and I have already discovered your passion for department stores, or emporiums, or whatever fancy name you like to call them. Do you know, Mother, she even deserted me in my sickbed in Paris to go and look at Bon Marché. Now if it had been the pictures in the Louvre. But a shop!” He gave his teasing impish smile. “Never mind, dearest, I intend to be a model husband, tolerant and understanding and long-suffering. Within reason, of course.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“If I want you I will expect you to be here.”

“Oh, but of
course
!”

“Then it’s settled. I’ll tell Dixon to bring the carriage round every morning. What time would you like it?”

“Oh—about nine-thirty, I think. But—”

“No buts, dearest. I said it was settled. On second thoughts, I believe a brougham would be more convenient than taking the carriage into town every day. We might arrange to get one. It would only need one horse, too. It would be quite economical.”

Strange economics, Papa would say in his scathing voice. A new brougham and another horse, as well as keeping the carriage and the two nicely matched greys they already had.

Was William attempting a subtle form of blackmail?

No, of course he wasn’t, he was merely being practical, and his suggestion was full of good sense. She must make sure that Papa understood this when she asked him for a cheque.

T
EN WEEKS LATER JOSHUA
Bonnington made his first visit to the shop since his illness. The journey tired him aggravatingly, and he was able to stay only a short time. Long enough, however, to see his daughter ensconsed in the cash desk, looking severely proprietorial as if she had been accustomed to sitting there for years. In her high-necked grey dress she looked like a damned governess, he thought ruefully.

Yet Joshua had to admit that he had had a good deal of satisfaction from discussing Bonnington’s affairs with Bea. She had a remarkable grasp of affairs, and besides one could trust one’s own flesh and blood. There also seemed to be such a thing as a woman’s touch, even in business. The shop was looking bright and attractive, with its new style of window dressing, and all those expensive tubs of flowers at the entrance. Little Bea certainly got things done.

Joshua could not say he admired the few sparse though choice items monopolising all the valuable window space. He had believed in showing as much of his stock as could be crowded into a window, piles of sheets and table linen, bolts of silk and Indian muslin and flowered cotton, smocks and aprons and petticoats, ribbons and lace, handkerchiefs, cravats, socks and stockings, and hats and bonnets like an overgrown garden, all clearly marked with the price. But Bea had found a young man, an aspiring artist, or a penniless artist, which was the same thing, and he had preached the modern doctrine that a window display should be like a fine painting, with not too many riches to confuse and distract the eye. A lady’s lacy gown with a matching parasol and a casually dropped bunch of violets. Very French, very rue de Rivoli, very chic.

But who was to know about the immense stock of Irish linen and other goods indoors, Joshua complained. He had to lean on his stick as he walked, and he was a bit breathless. But it was high time he was back in charge, he could see.

It was no use Bea confounding him with figures. Replicas of that lacy dress displayed in the window had been ordered eight times in the space of one morning. Christmas was approaching, of course, but there was no doubt a certain amount of trade was moving from other stores. Beatrice flourished new names among their customers. Lord McNeill’s eldest daughter Amelia, going to India to marry a Captain of Hussars, had ordered a complete trousseau, which included six of every kind of underwear, cambric chemises, hand-embroidered chemises, hand-embroidered lace-trimmed nightgowns, linen knickers and lace-trimmed knickers, petticoats of every variety, crêpe-de-chine, satin, Indian gauze, either lace-trimmed, hand-embroidered or both, also silk dressing-gowns and muslin dressing-gowns, half a dozen extravagant ruffled tea gowns, boudoir caps, blouses, stockings, and dresses for apparently every hour of the day. Amelia McNeill was going to put up the best possible show in English society in Delhi.

So that undoubtedly Bonnington’s of the Edgware Road, London, would be talked of even in that far-away place, and home-coming ladies, anxious to renew wardrobes ruined by the hot climate, would hasten to Miss Brown and her bevy of dressmakers.

Women! said Joshua Bonnington wonderingly. This was a market he had scarcely tapped.

His prosperity had been built on practical items, like boots and shoes and overcoats and household linen, and his business had been aimed at the lower middle classes. This change was happening too quickly. It confused him. Having to please fashionable and vain women wasn’t in his line at all.

“But I will do that,” said Beatrice. Hadn’t she obtained the order for a wedding dress and twelve bridesmaids’ dresses for Flora Atkins, an old schoolmate (which showed that Mamma’s snobbish school was succeeding in a way she hadn’t envisaged). Flora had come in to gape at Beatrice, and had remained to shop. With the new emphasis on women as the nation’s spenders, Beatrice was expecting a flood of orders for evening gowns and wraps for the theatre and the opera and other festivities in the coming season. She had instructed Miss Brown to hire more dressmakers and several young apprentices. Blanche Overton’s friends were widespread, and the Millicents and Ettys, like Flora Atkins, would be coming to gaze on the intriguing spectacle of young Mrs William Overton perched in the cash desk. She didn’t at all object to being a spectacle if the gapers remained to spend money.

She said she could hear old General Overton’s raucous chuckle as the sovereigns rattled into the till.

Anyway, they needed the extra trade, didn’t they, because her new brougham, a very smart affair, shiny black picked out with green, had been rather expensive.

It certainly had been, Papa grumbled. But he hadn’t been allowed to complain about that, considering how remarkably well young Bea was managing. She certainly had the bit between her teeth. One wondered if her husband, even with that handsome allowance, would eventually rue the day he had married her.

At present all seemed to be well. Beatrice was looking serenely happy and fulfilled. She said that William was quite undisturbed by all the gossip about her going to work, even though her mother-in-law was horrified by the spectacle she was making of herself.

This was true, although Mrs Overton, while complaining endlessly to her friends, had to admit that she could find no fault with the running of the house. That maddening girl, her daughter-in-law, was up at the crack of dawn, and making sure that the servants were up with her. What was more, she had them eating out of her hand. One would have thought they might have had the sense to despise a mistress who went out to work, but on the contrary the exasperating creatures seemed to admire her for it.

Cook’s opinion was that young Mrs William was ever so clever, and what was more, since she worked so hard herself, she would understand what it was to get tired and have aching feet. She noticed when the parlour maid’s chilblains were bad, or when Cook couldn’t do her best with her famous light pastry because of a scalded hand. She sent Ted, the knife boy, home when he had a nasty cough, then discovered that he and his mother and three younger brothers all lived in one room in Kentish Town, and gave orders that the lad was always to be given leftovers from dinner to take home. Cook was to see that there were leftovers. And none of the younger maids was to carry coal scuttles too heavy for her. It might damage her innards, especially for having children. Not many mistresses stopped to think about a housemaid being able to have babies safely when she married.

Of course, when Mrs William got in the family way herself, what would happen about all this going to work? Then the smart brougham drawn up at the front door sharp at nine-thirty every morning, with Dixon in his long overcoat and top hat, in the driving seat, would have to remain in the stables.