Life Mask (17 page)

'—apart from that pack of malcontent jackals outside, who cost me so much in plate glass.'

Murmurs of embarrassed sympathy.'
Belua multorum capitum,
as Horace would say,' contributed Edgcumbe.

Derby translated for the ladies' benefit: 'The mob is a many-headed monster. Is that boiled salmon, Sir Harry?' he added. It wasn't done to ask for a dish, but one could always throw out a hint.

'Mm and very good it is.'

One of the footmen scurried to bring it round to him. It was tasty but lukewarm, as always on these occasions; Derby had a fussy preference for hot food and when dining at home in Derby House he always had each dish carried up under a metal cover. (He'd given up the attempt at Knowsley, where the kitchen was ten minutes away from the dining room.)

'We'd need tighter security next time,' Richmond went on. 'I'll hire a team of private police to patrol the building.'

Lady Mary patted her husband on the cuff. 'Also, better ventilation.'

'Yes,' said Eliza, 'it was rather hot.' She shook her head at the pommes de terre au gratin Dick Edgcumbe was holding out.

'Stifling!'

'The fieriest circle in Dante's Inferno,' contributed Walpole.

'My paint melted into my eyes,' Mrs Hobart assured them.

'Ventilation, certainly,' said Richmond, nodding, 'and I think I'll have Wyatt design a special little box for our royal visitors. Next time, perhaps the King and Queen will grace us with their presence.'

Then Prinny couldn't be invited, Derby thought wryly; they could hardly coop Their Majesties up with their most rebellious child out of the whole thirteen and his unlawfully wedded wife. He could just imagine the monarch muttering through the performance in his twitchy way, going
what what what? eh eh?.

'What a tip-top plan,' cried Dick Edgcumbe. To his left, Mrs Margaret Farren produced a gappy smile.

'Of course, it all depends on our manager,' Richmond said, turning to the actress. 'We can hardly demand the gift of her time and energies again—'

'I do believe you can,' said the actress, laughing. Watching that perfect face, Derby felt slightly breathless. Did this mean he would have to do the gentlemanly thing and withdraw from the proceedings, claiming pressure of Party business? Or that she intended to treat him as any other of the Players? Or—could it be—that she had slightly softened towards him during their long parting?

'Dare we face the public again, and the critics?' wailed Mrs Hobart.

'Tish, tush,' said Lady Mary, 'you all loved it.'

'Oh,' said Mrs Damer, 'but that review that said I moved my face too much...'

'Nonsense, my child,' Walpole told her, 'you were as expressive as the role demanded.'

'Now you all know what it's like to be prey to the whims and megrims of the press," said Eliza.

'I don't know how you bear it,' Derby told her. She looked back at him briefly, but her eyes were unreadable.

'Have any of you read Cumberland's nasty piece in the
European Magazine
?' asked Walpole.

'No, but I quarrelled with him only the other day,' said Eliza.

'He mocks people of breeding for their feeble attempts to play at being actors—'

Mrs Hobart let out a yelp of protest.

'—and he deplores the hiring of professionals as managers, which is clearly a hit at you, dear Miss Farren,' said Walpole regretfully. 'Cumberland claims that when a lady of fashion is coached in all the trickery and airs of an actress whose own job is to ape ladies of fashion, the result is only the facsimile of a facsimile.'

'I think we've heard quite enough of the playwright's malice,' said Mrs Damer, signalling to the servants to swap the first cover for the second.

Over a selection of savouries and sweets, somehow they got on to the old debate about whether Woman's intellectual properties were as different from Man's as her physical ones. 'I don't mean inferior, exactly,' Dick Edgcumbe insisted, 'only distinct.'

'In what ways?' asked the hostess.

'Well—'

Richmond stepped into the breach. 'She thinks, but he meditates. She improves, but he creates. She feels, but he acts.'

'What balderdash,' said Mrs Damer, which caused a little hiatus.

'Asparagus, madam?' Derby, not fancying the look of the pale peeled spears, limp on their bed of soaked toast, offered the dish to Mrs Hobart—and she accepted with enthusiasm. Mrs Damer could do with some more expert service, he thought; that was three times now that he'd been offered the same cod purée.

'I hear William Beckford is back in England,' remarked Sir Harry Englefield.

'The cheek of him!' Mrs Hobart fanned so hard that her front curls bobbed.

'He can't think the World has forgotten the Powderham Castle affair; it's only been, what, three years,' remarked Richmond.

Of all the ludicrous risks for Beckford to run, thought Derby, to molest a boy—Lord Loughborough's nephew, what's more—while the house was full of visitors. The sugar heir must have known he was courting ostracism and exile.

'Sir William Hamilton defends him and says there was never any proof,' mentioned Mrs Damer, her eyes on her plate.

'I never liked
Vathek
,' said Lady Mary with a little shudder.

'No, the tale reveals Beckford's propensities on every page,' agreed her husband. 'Didn't he cause his wife's death, too?'

'Childbirth kills many,' Mrs Damer pointed out.

'She must have been weakened by the mortification of the scandal, surely,' said Sir Harry.

'But your news of Beckford's return is out of date, Edgcumbe,' Walpole put in with his well-informed smirk. 'The family packed him off again to their estates in Jamaica—but the amusing thing is my correspondent at Lisbon reports the young man has hopped ship there.'

'I don't call that very amusing, I must say.' Mrs Hobart sniffed.

Walpole gave shrug. 'At my age, madam, most things are amusing.'

A servant muttered over Derby's shoulder, 'Roast fowl, M'Lord?'

'Oh, yes.' At last the fowl had made it to his plate and there was still one thigh left. Sometimes at these dinners one might watch a favourite dish wander back and forth in front of one's nose, without ever getting to taste it. Derby dowsed his plate in oyster sauce.

'Your cousin is British Minister at Lisbon, isn't he?' Mrs Damer asked Walpole.

'Yes, and he swears he won't receive the sinner, won't present him to Queen Maria—and Beckford's relatives won't send him any letters of introduction—so he remains excluded from all good society.'

'Need we talk of the nasty monster?' said Mrs Hobart, wriggling in her seat.

'Certainly not, if you don't like,' said Walpole, changing the subject smoothly. 'In Russia, so my diplomat nephew Mr Fawkener tells me, dinner is served one dish at a time.'

Lady Mary turned her long lashes on him. 'But that must take all night.'

'They don't have half so many dishes,' he explained, 'only one big one for each course. The servants bring it round and serve every guest in turn.'

'How very odd.'

'The food must stay hotter,' Derby suggested, 'if it doesn't sit on the table for an hour.'

'Yes, but it doesn't sound very varied or convivial,' Richmond protested.

'Relaxing, though,' said Mrs Damer. 'Without all the to-and-fro of serving each other, and the interruptions, one could concentrate on conversation.'

'Oh, I think we manage well enough already,' said Derby. 'More mutton, Miss Farren?'

The actress shook her head, but this time she met his eyes for half a second.

Derby rinsed his fingers in the water bowl by his plate, then leaned back as the servants removed all the dishes and pulled off the cloth to show the handsome mahogany table.

'Is this chestnut purée from Gunter's?' Eliza was asking her hostess.

'Where else?' said Mrs Damer. 'And the cornucopia of spiced biscuits, and those bergamot wafers.'

'Gunter's my neighbour in Berkeley Square,' Walpole boasted. 'Best ices in the city.'

Derby had a bowl of Parmesan cheese ice cream, but left half of it to melt. He watched Eliza out of the corner of his eye, passing her some burnt almond sorbet and a glass of orange wine from the cordial frame.

After the table had been cleared they drank toasts to the health of all the ladies present and to the excellence of the food. Derby would usually have proposed Fox and he guessed that Richmond would have named the King, but on this occasion they both refrained. Their hostess called for paper and pencils so they could have a game of verses. 'For theme, an old favourite,' she said with a grin, 'the war of the sexes.'

'Ha ha!'

'Come down, o muse,' murmured Derby.

'Of course,' said Richmond, 'we have one muse among us already—Thalia, Muse of Comedy.' He dipped his head towards the actress.

Scattered claps greeted the compliment and Derby felt a prickle of resentment.

'Richmond, your partner shall be ... Mrs Hobart,' announced their hostess, 'and I'll pick Sir Harry. Let's pair Mrs Farren with Walpole—'

The actress's mother looked paralysed by fright and muttered something about her incapacity.

'No, you can't withdraw,' Eliza told her in a low voice, 'or we'll have odd numbers.'

'Fear not, good lady,' said Walpole merrily, 'just make a stab at it and I'll supply rhymes enough for both of us.'

'That leaves Edgcumbe and Lady Mary, and Derby and Miss Farren.'

She planned this,
thought Derby, glancing gratefully at Mrs Damer.
She's giving me a chance.
But his mind was blank. Whatever he wrote would have to bear reading aloud, they were all sitting too close together for him to risk a secret note. He concentrated furiously and produced four halting lines, which he passed down the table with a sheepish smile. Eliza read the slip, but her face told him nothing. There was a little bead of moisture at her hairline, he noticed. The room was warm.

'Done,' cried Mrs Hobart, thrusting her page into the Duke's lap.

'A moment, I beg you,' said the actress. She wrote two lines, quickly, then folded the paper.

'Miss Farren,' said Mrs Damer, 'won't you give us courage by being the first to recite your partner's verse?'

Eliza's rich tones filled the dining room.

Poor Adam longed to open up his heart
To his fair love, but alas, he lacked the art.
Women are famous talkers one and all—
Ever since Madam Eve brought on the Fall.

'Good hit, Derby!' Dick Edgcumbe clapped.

Derby made a face. 'The metre's most irregular.'

'How our masters at Eton would have caned us for such a slip,' cried Richmond.

Derby accepted the page Eliza passed up the table to him and cleared his throat. 'Ladies and gentlemen, Thalia's eloquently terse reply:

Some say that ladies gossip worse than men—
But every noisy cock drowns out his hen.'

'You've topped him.' Mrs Damer beamed at the actress.

'A perfect analogy for the Master of British Cocking,' said Lady Mary.

'I wouldn't say your sex gossip worse than mine on the whole,' Walpole quipped to Eliza. 'I'd say
better.
Besides, gossip's only a nasty word for the thread that binds society together.'

When the verses had been read, Walpole suggested they all come up to Mrs Damer's drawing room to see his terracotta eagle.

'No doubt the less abstemious gentlemen would rather stay and drink,' she rebuked him gently.

'No, no, let's not divide our cosy party,' said Derby, leaping to his feet.

The bird stood furled in rage on his square pedestal. 'Charming,' cooed Lady Mary.

'That's a mild word for such a fierce bird,' said Derby.

'Oh,' cried Eliza, 'but it's transformed since I saw it last. Those eyes—'

How odd,
thought Derby,
she's been in Mrs Damer's workshop.

'It's got something of you about it,' Richmond told his sister-in-law.

'Hasn't it, though,' cried Walpole. 'Young Missy in a tantrum at Strawberry Hill, as on the occasion when I slapped her legs for stealing the heads off all my roses.'

The company roared with laughter. Derby grinned at Mrs Damer, whose cheeks were pink. 'You haven't signed it.'

She shrugged. 'My godfather knows who made it.'

'But after I'm gone—which could be any day now,' Walpole told the company dramatically, causing more titters—'the heedless World must be reminded; it's always so quick to call a lady's work the secret production of some gentleman. The pedestal must say,
Non me Praxiteles finxit, at Anna Damer, 1787.'

The gentlemen all clapped. Watching Eliza's animated smile, Derby remembered that she knew no Latin.
'Not Praxiteles the famous sculptor, but Anne Damer, made me,'
he glossed it in a murmur.

'That's enough flattery,' said Mrs Damer; 'who'll take tea and who'll take brandy?'

The silver slider the brandy stood in bore their hostess's crest, Derby noticed as he helped himself; it was rather unorthodox for a lady to display her coat of arms, but then Mrs Damer was a very independent character.

Sir Harry was prevailing upon the actress to favour them with a song. She chose Handel's 'Chastity, Thou Cherub Bright', which Derby couldn't help taking rather personally. Then Mrs Damer, apologising for her voice, said she'd oblige with a piece of Dibdin's, because it alluded to her chosen art.'
We bipeds made up of frail clay,'
she sang merrily,

Alas are the children of sorrow,
And though brisk and merry today,
We all may be wretched tomorrow...

Afterwards the talk drifted inevitably to the Prince of Wales, whose debts were to be cleared by the public purse at last. 'Isn't it strange,' Mrs Damer murmured, 'how much sympathy this scandal has earned for Mrs Fitzherbert?'