Mr Bishop and the Actress (2 page)

‘It would never have done, sir, never, but I wish you the best of luck, sir.’

And so this is his last day in the house, for he and his new bride, formerly lady’s maid to Lady Shadderly, are on their way to join Roberts and his supply of footwear in another household.

I agree with him that it certainly will not do, but for other reasons. Two small children in dresses sit on the kitchen table feeding raw pastry into their mouths; the elder, a child of four or so, is the heir to the Viscount Shadderly, or Lord Shad as he is referred to with great affection by the household staff. Since I have met his lordship only in an exchange of letters my impression is that his staff like him for the liberties he tolerates downstairs.

I am not sure of the gender of the other child, a couple of years younger, who begins a slow, perilous descent down the table leg, a large wooden spoon clutched in one hand. I move forward to rescue the infant, who rewards me with a piercing shriek and a blow to the nose with the spoon.

‘Bless his heart!’ Mrs Dawson the cook exclaims, answering my unspoken question, and scoops the child into her arms. ‘Never you mind young Master Simon, Mr Bishop, he’s the sweetest of children.’

Eyes watering, I nod in agreement. ‘Where is their nursemaid?’

‘Nursemaid? Oh, Lady Shad don’t believe in them. We’re always willing to help out with the little dears. Now, Master George, you are not to pull the cat’s tail so, you know she will scratch. They are to hire a governess for Miss Amelia, though, now she’s almost a young lady.’

I pluck the cat from the table – a trail of footprints now adorn the pastry – and, as an afterthought, young Master George. He stares at me.

‘I want Mama,’ he announces as I plant him on the floor.

‘Lord Shad’s home,’ the one-armed footman announces, placing his mug of ale on the kitchen table and attaching a hook before hastening upstairs to open the front door. Master George reaches for the ale and spills it down himself.

The kitchen lurches into action; the pastry is wiped off and placed into a pie dish, the boy at the spit wakes up and turns the meat, and one of the female staff takes the two dirty children upstairs to be presented to their parents. ‘And Miss Amelia is . . . ?’

‘Lord Shad’s ward,’ Mrs Dawson replies with a firmness that does not invite further questions. ‘A very clever young lady, almost seventeen.’ She turns away and bellows at the kitchen staff to fetch coals and cabbage. I make note of the cracked china, the tarnished silver, and the general dirt and disorder.

‘Does the family always dine this early?’ It’s scarcely three o’clock.

‘They keep country hours usually, but a troupe of dancing dogs and a talking horse perform on the village green this evening and Lord Shad has given us permission to attend.’

‘Indeed.’ I should not have let this slovenly household have a night off, and I do not care that it shows on my face.

The footman returns with an order for tea upstairs and an invitation for me to dine with milord and milady. I’m somewhat taken aback at this egalitarianism, but this is the country after all.

I shall advise my employer and his lady to avoid the pie.

‘Pie, Bishop?’ Lady Shad waves a tarnished silver spoonful in my direction.

‘Thank you, ma’am, I—’

She drops the spoonful on to my plate. ‘Mrs Dawson has the lightest hand with pastry I have ever encountered.’

And possibly the dirtiest, although cooking has transformed that grey slab of dough into a wondrous golden flaky crust.

‘Don’t force food upon the man, Char. So as I was saying, Bishop, things have pretty much gone to seed since Roberts left.’ Viscount Shadderly is a handsome man in his mid-thirties, some ten years older than me; his wife, an attractive, plain-spoken woman, is vastly pregnant. ‘Meanwhile I regret I must leave for London tomorrow.’

‘You must?’ Lady Shad lurches to her feet, one hand on the table.

We both rise and watch her with some trepidation. Although she looks as though she is about to give birth at any moment, she has risen to spear another slice of ham from a platter.

‘Yes, my love. This matter with Charlie. My nephew experiences some financial difficulties,’ he explains to me as we sit.

‘He’s not your nephew. I believe he’s some sort of third cousin,’ Lady Shad comments. ‘And he’s become entangled with some elderly lightskirt who’s put him deeply in debt and he’s only twenty. But I don’t think you’ll go.’

‘Why’s that?’ He looks at her, eyes narrowed.

She lays her hand upon her swollen belly. ‘Oh, no particular reason. Pass the claret, if you will, Bishop.’

‘What!’ Lord Shad leaps to his feet, knocking a plate on to the floor. ‘Are you in labour, ma’am?’

She shrugs. ‘Don’t concern yourself.’

‘How long?’

‘Oh, since about eleven this morning.’

‘Ma’am, we have spent most of that time bumping along our abysmal country roads in a trap. Are you mad?’

‘I thought it might help things along. Besides, I wanted to see Hopkins’s new mare.’

Lord Shad mutters something about Hopkins’s new mare be damned under his breath and I consider how best to extricate myself from this delicate situation. He turns to me and barks, ‘Fetch Mrs Simpkins directly!’

‘I beg your pardon, sir. Who is—’

Lady Shadderly pours herself a glass of claret. ‘Of course he doesn’t know who Mrs Simpkins is, Shad. She’s the midwife.’

‘And every time, ma’am, I’ve told you we should be in town for your lyings-in with an accoucheur, not that toothless gossip—’

Lady Shad stands and I wonder if she is about to throw something at her husband, but naturally we stand too. The lady lays a hand on her swollen abdomen and makes a sound I can only describe as a grunt. Her husband and I stand transfixed until she lets out her breath in a long sigh. ‘That was a good one . . . Last time I saw her, Mrs Simpkins had six teeth.’

‘Her teeth, ma’am, are immaterial. What is at stake now is whether Bishop can reach her in time. Well, man, off with you.’

‘I beg your pardon, my lord.’ I move towards the door. ‘Where exactly will I find Mrs Simpkins?’

‘Damnation. You take the road into the village but before you get there, when you come to the crossroads, there is a large elm tree on your right and—’

‘Send a footman,’ Lady Shad says.

‘Excellent idea,’ says Lord Shad.

‘I beg your pardon, my lord, they’re all at the village for the fair.’

‘Who the devil gave them permission?’ Lord Shad shouts.

‘You did,’ says Lady Shad. She rests her elbows on the back of her chair. ‘Bishop, when you get there, make sure you see the mermaid.’

‘What mermaid?’ her husband asks.

‘There’s a mermaid . . .’ A long pause as she bends her forehead to her fists. ‘And dancing dogs and a talking horse.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Lord Shad drains his glass of claret and bangs it on to the table. ‘Bishop, be on your way.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Lady Shad says. ‘He’ll get lost. You go, Shad.’

Lord Shad looks from me to his wife and back again. He shakes his head. ‘I see I have no choice. Very well. Bishop, do whatever she says. My dear, pray try not to have the child for an hour.’

They kiss each other with a tenderness that makes me uncomfortable, for clearly they are much in love and I feel like an interloper.

‘Go away, Shad.’ His lady pushes him from her. ‘And don’t forget the mermaid.’

He runs from the room, leaving me frozen in terror while Lady Shad bends her head to the back of the chair again. I believe we are the only people in the house other than the children asleep upstairs. This was certainly not how I expected to begin my duties in the household. I had envisioned a quiet evening in the steward’s house (now mine) and to bed early to make up for the last two nights: sleepless nights in which I travelled from the north of England to take this position.

‘May I be of some assistance, ma’am?’ I ask when she straightens up again.

‘Give me your arm. I want to walk.’ This is so unlike my very limited knowledge of childbirth – overheard, whispered fragmentary accounts of hours and days of screaming and clutching bedposts – that I am relieved, fool that I am. She leans on my arm and we pace up and down the room, pausing when her fingers grip my arm and she leans on me, breathing heavily. Now and again she curses.

‘Do you think the mermaid is a girl with a fish tail?’ she asks.

‘Or the other way round, ma’am.’

She laughs a little and then groans and clutches my arm. ‘Bishop, is the bowl the cabbage was served in empty?’

‘You’d like some more cabbage, ma’am?’

‘No. Hand me the damned bowl.’

She pushes past me to grab the bowl from the table and vomits copiously into it, to my horror. She appears most unwell, flushed and sweaty, but she looks at me with a weak smile. ‘Don’t be so alarmed, Bishop. We will not have much longer at this. I always puke at around this time.’

‘That hardly reassures me, ma’am.’ I take the bowl from her and hand her a napkin. ‘What should I do?’

She shakes her head and takes my arm again. We resume our perambulation of the room while I hope desperately that her husband will return soon with the midwife who will take over from my male incompetence.

How long did he say he would be? An hour? There is no clock in the dining room. We walk and stop at her pains, and it seems to me that there is less walking now and more stopping.

‘Ma’am, should you not retire to your bed?’ Isn’t that how women are supposed to do it?

‘No. Don’t want to mess up the bed hangings.’ She stops at a sofa. ‘I must sit.’ I try to help her but she seems to have turned into a madwoman, pushing me away and cursing at me, and I fear the pangs of childbirth and the attentions of a stranger may have addled her mind.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she shrieks. Then, quite rationally, ‘Have you ever attended a birth before?’

‘Only kittens.’ And that was a much neater and tidier business, with the mother cat purring and producing a tidy bundle of kitten every minute or so.

‘It hurts! Where’s Shad?’ She writhes and slips off the edge of the sofa on to the floor, landing on her knees. At a loss, I moisten a napkin from the table with water and wipe her forehead, and as she does not scream at me I assume this helps.

‘My skirts.’ She rocks from side to side, attempting to free her skirts from under her knees. There is nothing for it now; apparently I am to become a man midwife whether I wish to or not, despite my terror.

‘Pray don’t distress yourself, ma’am.’

‘You whoreson!’ she screams at me, or her absent husband, or no one in particular. ‘Get my skirts up, you fool. You know how to do that, don’t you? This is no time for modesty.’

I can see that. ‘To be perfectly honest, ma’am—’

‘Hold your tongue!’ Then, very loudly and with a deafening shriek, ‘Do something!’

I tear off my coat for better access to her ladyship’s nether regions.

‘I shall die!’ she screams.

And then her husband will kill me for sure, which he may do anyway.

She grabs my ear with one hand, the sofa with the other – the ancient brocade gives way under her nails – and dear God, someone else has joined us in a great rush of warm fluid. That is, I believe it to be a person, smeared in blood and some sort of wax, creased and hideous, slippery in my hands.

She stops screaming and the room is tremendously quiet. ‘What is it?’

How can I tell her she has given birth to a monster? A twisted blue rope obscures its sex. ‘I don’t know. A boy? No, it’s a girl. Yes, a girl.’

‘Give her to me!’ she screams very loudly, but it’s a different, exultant sort of cry. The strange creature in my arms now flails its limbs and turns from grey to mottled red as it opens its mouth to shriek almost as loudly as its mother. From one second to another, everything is transformed.

‘You’re crying, Bishop,’ Lady Shad says and reaches for the child we have just delivered.

I am, to my surprise. I also seem to have forgotten how to breathe and I can’t see properly. Mother and child, the dining room with its cobwebbed comices and dark paintings on the wall, all spin around and away from me as I fall into an unmanly swoon.

‘Bishop?’ Lord Shad kneels at my side. He’s smiling although somewhat wet around the eyes, and holds a glass of brandy. ‘My apologies for leaving you in such a damnable situation, sir, and my most heartfelt thanks for the safe delivery of my daughter. Lady Shad has sung your praises this past quarter hour. We thought it best to let you sleep for a while.’

‘The baby,’ I croak. ‘Lady Shad. Are they well? I beg your pardon for falling asleep. I am somewhat fatigued.’

‘They are both well, thanks to you. Come and drink my daughter’s health.’ He pats my shoulder and retreats.

The room is transformed. Before, I saw a slightly shabby dining room with dingy faded walls and indifferent portraits, dark with age, hung around it. Now it glows golden in lamplight, and Lady Shad sits on the couch, her daughter at her breast, her two little boys awed and adoring at her side, as beautiful as any portrait painting. A woman, who from her lack of teeth must be Mrs Simpkins, clucks over them all and urges Lady Shad to drink ale.

‘My deliverer!’ Lady Shad holds her hand out to me and laughs at her own joke. ‘I must not laugh. It hurts my—well, never mind where it hurts, Bishop. Look at this child you and I produced.’

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. I believe I had some previous involvement in the matter,’ Shad says. ‘What shall we name her? What is your Christian name, Bishop?’

‘Henry, my lord. My family call me Harry, but I beg of you, do not feel obliged—’

‘Harry! Then she must be Harriet,’ Lady Shad says. ‘And we owe you a coat, Bishop. I’m afraid yours is ruined.’

The child, although still somewhat creased and red, has been wiped clean and looks slightly less like a goblin. I feel a great surge of pride and affection as though she were my own, and for Lady Shad too, whom I believe I must be halfway in love with, despite the indignities of our association. And I am more than halfway in love with the whole family, if such a thing is possible. I see now why Shad (and referring to him thus seems natural and easy) is so highly regarded downstairs, this man who has treated me with such kindness, and now sits with his two sons upon his lap gazing upon his wife and new daughter.