Long Live the King (19 page)

‘I cannot pretend not to be interested,’ he said. ‘But I will not ask you to be indiscreet.’

‘It was most agreeable and most relaxed,’ said Robert.

‘Ah yes, banging away at birds,’ said Balfour. ‘One is sorry for the women, who have nothing to do to but change their clothes ten times a day, while dead birds fall all around. I wish our royals would learn to play golf. You’re a horseman, I believe.’

Robert agreed that he was, but added that a good shoot on a bright winter’s day was hard to beat.

‘Always tactful, Dilberne,’ said Balfour. ‘Now tell me. Was there any talk of the Shah of Persia?’

‘I am not a Foreign Office man,’ protested Robert. ‘I know horses and I know gold mines: ask me about wars and colonies and trade by all means, but please, not diplomacy. But yes, the King has set his face against asking the Shah to a State dinner: yes, the King feels the Foreign Minister should not have offered the Shah the Order of the Garter, when it was in the King’s gift, not the government’s. He has made this obvious enough to you himself, I know. The King is sensitive at the moment and anxious not to be overlooked.’

‘He is so like a child,’ said Balfour. ‘Yet so very large in person one forgets. But I daresay his heart is in the right place.’

Robert protested that indeed it was. The King had declared that he was going to present at least part of Osborne House to the nation, for the benefit of wounded soldiers.

‘Rather for his own benefit, I suspect,’ said Balfour, ‘to better expunge all memory of the abominable Brown and the even more abominable Munshi, which have so blighted the King’s memory of his mother.’

Robert murmured that the King’s upset was understandable. The Queen had replaced his father as husband with Brown the ghillie, and himself as son with the Munshi, an Indian waiter. The insult could not be greater.

‘I fear the public sees something a little less innocent than that,’ said Balfour. ‘You know rumours keep circulating that she had an actual marriage to Brown? Though I daresay the nation will be happy enough to accept Osborne, by way of apology.’

‘It was Queen Alix’s doing,’ said Robert, soothingly. ‘She has a soft heart and cares for the welfare of wounded soldiers. We shouldn’t look for sinister motives when none exists.’

‘Oh Dilberne,’ said Balfour, ‘you are such a diplomat and such a liar. You would do well at the Foreign Office.’

When Salisbury either retired formally or died there would be a new government and a new Cabinet. Robert could see this conversation, which had at first seemed so casual, was serving as an interview. Perhaps Balfour saw him as rather similar to himself, a Tory by family and tradition but a Liberal at heart? But he was no Liberal.

‘No,’ said Robert firmly. ‘I would not. I too prefer to be liked than disliked.’

‘Treasury?’ asked Baldwin. ‘To all accounts you wheel and deal most successfully.’

‘My advisers do,’ said Robert. ‘I am an innocent.’

He remembered the tickets Consuelo had given him. Isobel had been foolish enough to lose them, throwing them out with other papers, but had been going to ask Consuelo over some ladies’ lunch to replace them. The Coronation was months ahead but Robert must confirm it had been done. On such small details preferment depended. Isobel had already shown she was quite capable of forgetting to send what she was not enthusiastic about sending – it must not happen again. It was a pity she dismissed the Baums as social climbers: both seemed pleasant enough to him, and even engaging.

Balfour did not probe further and then startled Robert by asking if Robert and his wife would care to join him in a séance, which he and a few scientist friends were organizing at his house in Carlton House Terrace.

‘Do not worry,’ said Balfour. ‘We have a group of well-established cynics from the Psychical Research Society to overlook what goes on, and the medium herself is well recommended. We will put politics to one side and concentrate on philosophy. Whether or not we live on after death is as least as interesting as the fate of the Liberals. Or do you see it as so many do, as humbug?’

‘I haven’t given the matter much thought,’ said Robert. ‘But we would be delighted to come along. Though I fear Isobel is rather sceptical on these matters.’

‘It is hard to stay sceptical if you have witnessed these things with your own eyes,’ said Balfour.

The answer, thought Robert, might well be to take care not to witness them by not holding séances and tapping tables. But then the whole world seemed to be at it, a fashion first set by the Old Queen as she tried to bring poor Albert back from the grave, and with her own death had found new energy. Even the King entertained himself and his guests with a planchette board. Now every kitchen maid, every drunken ploughman staggering home from the pub had seen a ghost. Balfour was known to seek the spirit of his lost May from amongst the shades, and it was seen as a harmless folly, product of a profound and lasting grief – but to be widely known for it would do his reputation as a rational and competent leader of men no good at all. On the other hand, outright dismissal of his ideas would hardly be politic.

For his own part he could see that Heaven was ‘to be with God’, and that to throw a few sinners into a boiling pit was the only way justice could ever be achieved in a cosmos so clearly short of it. He could see that the finality of death was hard to comprehend, but beyond that he would not go. His own brother Edwin was scarcely cold in his grave, and his death was certainly hard to believe, let alone grieve for. But he saw no signs that the ‘spirits’ lingered on; he was not so credulous.

‘I am open to conviction,’ said Robert, crossing his fingers like a schoolboy.

A greyish-brown fog was beginning to seep up the Thames, clouding the windows so that passing boats outside became vaguely visible passing shapes, rather than definite and detailed reminders of industry and success. His Lordship shivered, recalling the time in this very place that Isobel had nearly left him, having discovered a passing act of indiscretion on his part. But he hoped he had learnt his lesson. Consuelo was very fond of Balfour, but, Robert hoped, in a daughterly way. She saw something spiritual in him. Well, Robert was fond of Consuelo too, and he hoped in a fatherly way, though if she looked for anything spiritual in him she looked in vain.

But Arthur was telling him about his old tutor, mentor and friend, the classical scholar Frederick Myers, with whom he had set up the Society for Psychical Research. Myers, Balfour assured him, was already communicating with him from the other side. He had passed over some six months back, but now, through reliable mediums, specialists in automatic writing, selected in advance from all over the world, was already beginning to send messages from the other side, using classical references of which only the one passed over could be aware. Robert cut him short, saying he must be off to see Isobel. When Balfour got onto this particular hobby-horse, really it was a lot of tosh.

March – 1902

Who is Fairest of Us All?

As Adela’s mind and mood swung like the St Aidan’s weathercock, first one way then the other, her body was changing too. There was a waist where none had been before and budding bumps on her chest. A kind of cheerful determination was building up inside her. It couldn’t only be because she was warm and well fed, and the first crocuses of the year were showing, it was because her mother was gone and so her body as well as her soul was free. She was still looking forward to the Little Sisters of Bethany but perhaps not as much as she had been. Her mother had described the sin of vanity as looking at yourself in mirrors:
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who is the fairest of us all?

The answer was to have as few mirrors in the house as possible. In the Rectory there’d been just a square of one next to everyone’s ewer and basin for looking in when you washed your teeth. Adela had sometimes wondered if she would see Rumplestiltskin’s teeth and not her own if she looked, so she’d try and get them clean by rubbing with bicarbonate and finger alone, but it could be messy.

Adela, in her new naughtiness, could see her mother might well rather not look at herself for fear of what she would see, but what was true of the mother was not necessarily true of her daughter. She would find out: there was a large mirror over the fireplace in her room, mottled glass with an ornate gilt frame. If she climbed up on a chair and tilted the mirror towards her she could see the full length of her black-clothed self any time she liked.

First she bolted the door to make sure no one could come in. Ever since the strange episode at the funeral – when she had disgraced herself with hysterics, Ivy’s young man had cured her with a slap, and Frank had intervened and there had been a scuffle – Frank was always popping in and out, like some jack-in-the-box. It was not right. She was not a child any more, she was a grown woman. He should stop it. She needed a chaperone. She wanted to slap Frank to wipe the serious, soulful look off his face; the smile when his lips smiled but his eyes didn’t.

She climbed on the chair and by wedging a copy of
Self-Help
from the Palace library beneath the frame she found she could see very well.

At first she looked tentatively and shyly, then boldly and longer. Yes, she was right. She looked like Ruth the Moabite in the illustration in one of the children’s books at Sunday school. The corn was a strange orange shade but the image had been memorable. Ruth the Moabite, the beautiful widow, stranger in a strange land, weeping amongst the alien corn. To be orphaned was probably sadder and even more dramatic than being widowed. Yes, she was Ruth herself, bereaved, beautiful, tragic, brave.

But what if she took off all her clothes? She felt her mother’s shock, her father’s horror. She flinched before the shouting. ‘Are you stupid as well as plain?’

Have you ever thought, as the hearse goes by,

The worms are waiting for you and I . . .?

She positioned herself in front of the mirror so she could see the length of her body: she let her hair fall free from its tight bun. She took her clothes off, piece by piece, and dropped them on the floor. She did not look until they were all off.

She had nothing to compare it to, never having before seen a picture of a naked human body, male or female, let alone a real one. What she saw now was good: its planes and curves pleasing. Her breasts were bigger and more rounded than she had thought, not little peaky things at all. She was so pale, almost to the point of transparency. She was rather splodgy and freckled too, but that was the mottle of the old mirror. Her head was too big but that was the way the mirror was tilted. She liked the way her hair rippled almost to her waist. She like the way the bush of darker hair, where her legs joined, seemed to centre the whole.

She was no longer Ruth the Moabite; she was Burne-Jones’s Princess Sabra, thanking St George for rescuing her from the dragon. She’d seen the painting of the Princess Sabra in a catalogue left behind by mistake by the Church furnishers; she had admired the richness of the flowing fabric, marvelled at how an artist could make the flesh come to life. Her father had found her looking and removed the book. It was sacrilegious; the Church gone mad, fallen into eroticism and heresy. He had shouted. A bit of plaster had fallen from the ceiling. She, Adela, knew what it was to be rescued. Her own St George had flung her over his shoulder and rescued her from the flames.

Or perhaps she was Millais’s Portia? Ivy’s mother had a water-stained print on her kitchen wall. Beauty, strength and judgement, all at once: what one must aim for. She was shivering. Enough of all this. She must cover herself up. She removed Samuel Smiles and the mirror fell back into place with a puff of dust. She climbed down from the chair.

She quickly dressed again. White underskirts, black petticoats, high-buttoned black moiré dress, long black sleeves, little black laced boots. She scraped the golden hair back in the bun. But everything had changed. She was all these women. She was Ruth, sick for home, she was Sabra, the rescued, she was Portia the wise, but most of all she was Eve, who had succumbed and eaten the apple. She had an intimation of the pleasures of the flesh, and how they were at odds with the aspirations of the soul. You had to choose. She had chosen a life of devotion to God and to others, but perhaps she was wrong?

She was sitting on her chair, bent over the better to lace the row of buttons on her last shoe, when the door pushed open and there was Frank. She had thought she had locked the door, but now could see that the mediaeval lock was more theatre than actuality. You slammed the great bolt across, but there was no socket. The real lock was a tiny hook and eyelet, which she had failed to see.

Had he been watching her, like Rumpelstiltskin? It was silly to see him like a wicked dwarf; he was so obviously not, with his upright carriage, clear skin and the wide candid eyes. He had been training to be a missionary in Australia, bringing the word of God to a place of savages, typhoons, crocodiles, kangaroos and houses on stilts where termites gnawed. He was brave and good, Mrs Kennion said. Now he was bringing her a glass of cordial. He did not meet her eye.

‘Mrs Kennion asked me to bring you this, Miss Adela,’ he said, in his soft light voice. ‘It’s a lime cordial they make locally and it has health-giving properties.’

‘Thank you very much, Frank,’ she said, and he went away.

It was perfectly possible that he had come up to her room in all innocence, as was his wont, found the door ajar, seen it as an invitation, like Rumpelstiltskin peered at her naked form, and only when she was down from her chair and properly dressed again had let his presence be known. It was possible, but not probable. At least the incident would not be spoken of, any more than had the scuffle at the funeral. But Adela was left with a strange feeling of excitement and repulsion mixed; of more to come. She could see it was probably to do with ‘the curse’ she now had to endure and that Jenny and Mrs Kennion had described as the rubbish left behind when you didn’t have babies. The two were interlinked. If only there were someone to explain it to her, but there was not. The medical books were no help. They described the mechanics of the female menstrual cycle, but not how it made you feel. What it made her feel was naughty, defiant, and jumping up and down and making faces at other people.