Read Habits of the House Online
Authors: Fay Weldon
Habits of the House (2 page)
7.20 a.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899
Mrs Neville the housekeeper assumed Grace or Elsie would be on their way to the door. She herself could hardly be expected to attend to it; the wares of dairyman, fishmonger, butcher and baker all seemed to be arriving at once at the trade entrance for the big dinner that evening. Everything must go perfectly. The Nevilles, butler and housekeeper, with forty years in service behind them, including some ducal experience, also fretted at their employer’s decision to stay on in London through the autumn. Life was more tranquil at Dilberne Court: they were in their fifties and had seen the job as semi-retirement. In the country the home farm provided most of the food, and the number of staff, mostly live-in and all loyal, was sufficient to make sure the household ran smoothly.
Here in Belgrave Square, accommodation was more cramped than it ought to be: only a handful of regular staff could live in. Agency staff had to be taken on, and Londoners were known to be a light-fingered lot, so that Mr Neville must forever be checking for missing provisions, cutlery, linen, wine and what have you. This morning though he was nowhere to be seen. Mrs Neville had ordered that he was not to be roused – he had not got to bed until past two because of his Lordship’s late arrival home the previous night, and this night’s big dinner would go on until the early hours. Mr
Neville suffered from pains in the chest and Mrs Neville worried for him.
‘He’s fifty-three,’ she’d say. ‘A man can expect to live to fifty and a woman to fifty-seven. Now if only it suited the Good Lord to take three years off my lifespan and add it to Mr Neville’s, we could both go at fifty-four and be in paradise together without inconvenient delay.’ Grace, who was good at figures, faulted Mrs Neville’s arithmetic, but reckoned it all kept the older woman from brooding and grieving, so kept quiet.
In Mr Neville’s absence Reginald was in charge. He was a Dilberne Court man, and acted there as head footman. Here in London his duties were more numerous. He also drove the family cabriolet as required. Horse and carriage were kept in the mews at the back of Belgrave Square. Viscount Arthur liked to drive himself, and sometimes Miss Rosina would insist on taking the reins, though her mother felt it scarcely meet and right so to do. Reginald was a handsome, lively young man of quick, if sometimes rash decision. He was well-liked, frequently reprimanded and frequently forgiven. His unfortunate, rash, decision this morning was to ignore the caller at the front door. In his opinion Elsie was too dirty from the grates to be sent; Grace too grand to be asked. Cook was still in bed and Smithers the parlour maid in her absence already seeing to the staff breakfast. Reginald was hungry and did not want his morning meal delayed. He solved the problem at source by shoving a crust of bread between the bell and its electric wire to deaden the sound should it happen again.
‘Some street urchin, who’d best be whipped,’ said Reginald. ‘Ignore it.’
‘But it could be anyone,’ said Smithers from the stove. ‘Perhaps it’s the Prince of Wales calling by for his Lordship,’
she said now, ‘with tales of what he was up to last night. Best answer it, or it will end in tears.’ Smithers knew better than to joke about the Prince of Wales were Mr or Mrs Neville in the room, but she was alone with Reginald who had an agreeably ribald approach to the amorous lives of the nobs. Smithers, at thirty-six, a stout country lass with a double chin and bright small eyes, had long since given up any hope of marriage, but like so many of the female staff was happy enough to have the society of Reginald in their lives, as a source of shock, awe and adoration. Smithers was gathering ingredients together, leftovers from last night’s upstairs table to cook up as good a staff breakfast as she could. She was more generous when it came to cooking food than Mrs Welsh, but took more time about it. She planned to use beef fat to fry up last night’s bread rolls, chopped, with patties made from leftover chicken stuffing. The chicken itself was mostly gone. Arthur had a good appetite. The servants’ breakfast was never separately catered for, but left to their devices to make an adequate meal, to be served whenever time allowed. At Dilberne Court the routine was more set: in London the unexpected happened, even if only a doorbell ringing out of turn.
It was for Reginald’s sake that Smithers now added bacon to the fry-up. The flitch had been brought up from Dilberne Court where it had been cured in the Hampshire way, with sea salt. London bacon was cured with common salt, too little sugar, and too much saltpetre, thus hastening and cheapening the process, but souring the result. In more frugal households the staff would have been fed London bacon, mean yellow stuff which would have to have the sulphur scraped off it before broiling. But it was her Ladyship’s policy, though others thought it most extravagant, to allow her staff the luxury of eating much the same food as the family, although not
necessarily, as could be seen from today’s breakfast, freshly cooked. Loyalty, as Lady Isobel was well aware in these troubled times of servant shortages, had to be earned, and could not just be expected. The smell tantalized Reginald, who had once told Smithers that when she was cooking bacon she looked almost attractive enough to marry. She had daydreamed sometimes since that this might possibly happen, but realized the folly of such hope. Reginald had a taste for bad girls, everyone knew, and Smithers simply did not have the looks.
‘Dirty Bertie,’ said Reginald, ‘and don’t let your betters hear you calling him that, has a wife to go back to whom they say he tells all, and quite enjoys the telling. He won’t be knocking on our door.’ Since the Princess Alexandra was known to have struck up a friendship with one the of the Prince’s mistresses, the rumour had arisen. ‘Telling’ was a misnomer since the poor woman was stone deaf. But that did not stop the rumour. ‘If they’re so desperate, whoever it is can come round the back.’
7.35 a.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899
So it was his Lordship himself who eventually unlocked and opened the double doors of No. 17 to an ill-tempered Mr Baum; the bell had by now stopped ringing and Baum sat bad-tempered and cold-bottomed on the step. His Lordship found the doors surprisingly heavy and realized, startling himself, that he had never before actually answered his own front door. He wondered if paying others to do so made him less or more of a man. Less, in his own eyes, he supposed; more, in the eyes of the world. Less, because fate had landed him in this situation; it was not merit but circumstance of birth had led him to this pass; more because the world presumed his energy was so important it had to be reserved for more important things than opening doors. Worse, Reginald would make light work of the task, being a well set up young man, but even the maids seemed to have no trouble. He was growing old. It was alarming how the awareness struck him with increasing frequency. Mind you, bloody Gladstone had lived until ninety, working mischief and scribbling to the end. But on the other hand, Robert’s fellow Tories felt confident that if the Liberals finally brought in a Pensions Bill for the impoverished and very old – those over the age of seventy – few would live to collect it.
He the Earl was not immortal. His son Arthur must get going, get married, provide an heir to the estate. Otherwise,
on his death his own younger brother would collect the title – and the estate debts, of course, which were plentiful. These days vast estates meant vast debts rather than vast wealth – and poor Isobel, if she lived so long, would be ousted even from the dower house, which was in a shocking state of repair as it was, which would not suit her at all. A pity Arthur had so little interest in political affairs, and Rosina so much.
By the time the door was finally opened to Mr Baum his Lordship was so preoccupied by his own thoughts that it was moments before he recognized the fellow sitting on the steps.
‘Good God,’ he said, seeing Baum. ‘You! Why?’ It was scarcely a genial greeting, and Eric Baum thought he deserved better.
Baum stood up slowly, and winced from a stiffness in his legs. He had, he explained, some urgent news from South Africa which he thought should be imparted to his Lordship before he set off for the House.
‘In my experience, news that is urgent is seldom of permanent interest,’ said his Lordship with a detached smile and the polite charm of the old Etonian who is actually delivering an insult, but one that only his own kind will recognize. ‘However, dear fellow, since you’re here – you’d better come in and tell me all about it.’
Robert courteously stepped aside to allow Baum to enter. He noted that Baum was wearing a bright yellow waistcoat with a stiff high collar, in the current fashion amongst some young men, apparently aping that of those who lived in God’s Own Country. Which was how the English sardonically enjoyed referring to the Americans and their vulgar, money-grubbing, noisy, self-affirming ways. His Lordship wondered quite how it was that he had ended up with a financial counsellor so attuned to the worst of contemporary taste.
Once lawyers and professional men of all kinds had been predictably old, grey and cautious. No longer.
Baum repeated that, in his opinion, time was of the essence, and more that since his news affected the finances of the whole family, the Countess should perhaps be present at an immediate meeting, and the children too – they both being well into their majority and having so much of their wealth now invested in Natal. His eyes seemed to dart about uneasily, as a man’s might when he has something to hide.
His Lordship was mildly disturbed by his lawyer’s presumption, but since he was currently in debt to the fellow to the tune of some thirty thousand pounds, merely pointed out that her Ladyship normally breakfasted in bed and since neither of the children was a trustee of their trust funds, and he was, there was no necessity at all for their presence. And surely it was seemly that business matters waited until later in the day?
‘Stay to breakfast, my good man, stay to breakfast,’ he said genially, and at least did not suggest, though the temptation arose, that Baum might prefer to go round to the trade entrance and have breakfast in the servants’ hall, where no doubt at this time of the morning it was available. He remembered in time that it was the Prince’s friend and financial advisor Ernest Cassel – recently made a Knight of the Grand Cross – who had recommended Mr Baum to Robert as a shrewd and reliable financial counsellor and solicitor, with a background in mining and a good grasp of current commercial and financial matters. A good choice to manage the Dilberne financial estate, which in his Lordship’s own description was in ‘rather a jolly mess’.
But then Cassel knew well enough how to conduct himself as a gentleman, whereas Baum had just evidenced that he did
not. Gentlemen wore their hats when out and about, were smartly attired, did not wear ridiculous fashions, or run through the streets in a panic to disturb other people’s slumber, and then sit gloomily upon their damp front steps.
Cassel was urbane and self-deprecating. ‘When I was young,’ he’d said to his Lordship, ‘people called me a gambler. As soon as the scale of my operations increased they called me a speculator. Now I am called a banker. But I have been doing the same thing all the time. You need someone reliable with an eye for detail, like young Eric Baum.’
But now Baum’s preoccupation with detail was running out of control. He seemed unable to stop babbling: her Ladyship had a good head on her shoulders and needed to be involved; the children needed to stop running up debts, Master Arthur’s tailor’s bills were now a matter of real concern with Mr Skinner from Savile Row contemplating legal action, and Miss Rosina had written a cheque to the Women’s Suffrage Movement, which Mr Baum was sorely tempted to deny. Suffrage would do women no good, they would all simply end up as work drudges, and men feeling no responsibility at all for their welfare, but to what degree was Mr Baum to use his own discretion in such matters? The bills came in to him and if he did nothing, nothing was resolved.
‘And these are the least of my worries,’ said Mr Baum, ‘I regret to say. What I have to tell you concerns all the immediate members of your family. All being signatories, all must hear it in person, in case of any future dispute. It is of great significance to all of them.’ Robert frowned; he was no more used to being told what to do than he was to opening his own front door. ‘Your Lordship …’ he heard Baum’s voice as though from far off.
He sighed. The debtor, it seemed, must not only be servant to the lender, but give the lender his attention. There was to be
no escape. He rang for Mrs Neville, who summoned Grace, who roused Lady Isobel and the children with the advice that they were expected down to breakfast with his Lordship and Mr Baum at nine o’clock. In the kitchens Smithers complained and abandoned the staff breakfast. Elsie, who had at least managed to have the morning room fire burning brightly, ran to bring Cook down from her attic to help achieve a formal upstairs breakfast for five including a guest, one hour earlier than normal. In the meanwhile his Lordship left Baum to cool his heels in the library and went out to the mews to check that Agripin was getting the treatment he deserved.
The horse was a promising four-year-old bay Robert had recently won in a wager with the Prince of Wales. The Prince could well afford the loss, having backed Cassel’s Gadfly for a win in her maiden race, to the tune of five hundred pounds at seventeen to one. That win had been at the October meet in Newmarket. There had been eighteen in the field. The Prince liked to win at racing just as he liked to win at cards. It cheered him up. Agripin would need to be farmed out to Roseberry’s estate in Epsom for John Huggins to train, an expense Robert had not reckoned on at the time of the wager, but it was surely a good investment. You only had to look at the creature to tell he would eventually make someone a fortune, and at this particular time it would be just as well that he was that person, and that it should happen rather quickly.
