Not Less Than Gods (2 page)

Mr. Septimus Bell was a gentleman, if of comparatively recent gentry. He was small and dapperly made, with smooth dark hair and rather fine dark eyes. He married one Dorothea Carr, a lady small and vivacious, as like him as a sister might be in appearance, and the two were as happy together as a pair of robins in one nest.

The nest they preferred was situated in London, at No. 10 Albany Crescent, a nicely furnished terrace house with a complete staff. Richardson, the butler, was a former sergeant-at-arms and kept the establishment running with military precision, so the happy couple had little more to do with their days but bill and coo.

After ten years of married bliss, however, their mutual affection had yet to produce a child. This was the only shadow on their happiness, but it loomed more darkly with each passing summer. The household staff observed that Mrs. Bell was now given to occasional weeping fits at the slightest provocation. She complained of headaches and unspecified malaise, and often sat gazing mournfully out into Albany Square, sighing whenever a governess and her charges passed the window.

Mr. Bell was at his wit’s end seeking to make his wife happy. For the first time, quarrels, or something perilously near to them, could be heard emanating from the love nest upstairs. Distinguished doctors came to call at No. 10; patent nostrums arrived by post, as did a number of patent
devices whose functions could only be guessed at by the scandalized household staff. In the course of time, however, all these efforts bore the desired fruit. Mrs. Bell was suddenly smiling through her still-frequent tears, and Mr. Bell stood perceptibly taller, walked with a perceptibly lighter step.

The incipient heir was formally announced to the household. Congratulations were tendered from all the staff. An expectant hush settled on No. 10, and Nature took her course.

The long-awaited day, Lammas Eve, came and stretched into night, and thence into another day, as a second doctor was called in to consult with the first. The two maids ran to and fro on their tasks, periodically reporting back to the staff downstairs. By noon of the second day they were in tears. At last they came down slowly, silent, and only patient questioning on the part of Richardson was able to elicit news of the arrival and subsequent departure of a small boy, the image of his father but blue as the Bluebird of Happiness. He had never been persuaded to take so much as one breath of mortal air.

The well-appointed nursery sat empty, while the funerary arrangements were made. The ghastly prettiness of the tiny coffin and hearse, all white silk and winking crystal beads, the little confection of a white marble gravestone selected by Mr. Bell, the avalanche of consolatory correspondence, all had their due effect on Mrs. Bell’s nerves. She took to her bed and went mad. Weeping incessantly, she insisted that her child had
not
died, that the fairies had stolen it away, and implied that Mr. Bell was no manner of a man if he failed to go into Fairyland and retrieve it for her.

Mr. Bell went instead to Brook’s, and remained there, gambling away a great deal of money. He had very nearly bankrupted himself, and was considering whether he ought to quarrel with a noted duelist or simply borrow a pistol and take matters into his own hands when he was approached by a fellow member.

For a brandy-sodden moment Mr. Bell thought Dr. Nennys was the Devil, dark and sleek and faintly smiling as he was; but Dr. Nennys spoke solemnly and, indeed, kindly, asserting that Mr. Bell’s headlong
rush to self-destruction was ill-advised. He pointed out that, sad as Mr. Bell’s loss had been, countless other parents suffered bereavement daily and the ways of the Almighty were not to be questioned. He proposed, in any case, to ameliorate Mr. Bell’s sorrows both familial and financial.

There was, it seemed, a child born the selfsame day as Mr. Bell’s own boy, to a lady of noble blood by a lord similarly well-bred, unfortunately without benefit of clergy. A suitable home was wanted for the young person. Dr. Nennys had been authorized to seek out appropriate foster parents for him, and moreover to offer substantial monetary compensation, paid quarterly. Dr. Nennys named a certain sum, and Mr. Bell’s eyes widened. It was more than enough to offset his losses at cards. Stammering, he accepted Dr. Nennys’s offer. Dr. Nennys arranged to bring the infant to No. 10 that evening, at a discreetly late hour.

At midnight precisely a black coach drew up before No. 10. A black-veiled woman emerged with a bundle in her arms. Mr. Bell hurried down the walk, closely followed by Richardson. The coachman leaped down, set a trunk on the pavement, resumed his seat and drove off at some speed. The woman nodded curtly to Mr. Bell and informed him she was the infant’s nursemaid, that her name was Mrs. Melpomene Lodge, that the infant was Edward Alton Fairfax, and that she would be pleased to inspect the nursery at Richardson’s convenience.

The following morning Mr. Bell preceded the breakfast tray into Mrs. Bell’s sickroom, bearing the infant dressed in one of their dead child’s gowns. When Mr. Bell had got her to look at him, he announced that he had gone to Fairyland as she requested, and brought back their son. Mrs. Bell left off crying, astonished, and as she stared at him he set the infant in her arms. She looked down at it.

Nothing was said for an interminably long moment, in which Mr. Bell had occasion to reflect that this child bore no resemblance to the one they had buried. It was bigger, robustly pink, and had an abundance of fair hair. The only mar to its perfection was a slight bruise on the bridge of its nose. Mr. Bell held his breath, waiting for a reaction from his wife.

At last Mrs. Bell said that it had no eyelashes. Mr. Bell replied that
they were certainly there; the infant was simply too fair for them to show much. She acknowledged this by pursing her lips slightly. For a while longer she continued to regard the infant, as though puzzled, and at last laid it down on the counterpane. She thanked Mr. Bell, but said she didn’t think she wanted it, and might she have her breakfast tray now?

The housemaid, who had been waiting all this time with Mrs. Bell’s tray, thrust it at Mr. Bell, caught up the infant and rushed from the room in tears. Aghast, Mr. Bell waited on his wife, trying to think of a way to explain that they must keep the child or face financial ruin. To his great relief, Mrs. Bell made no further reference to it, but dried her eyes and spoke calmly and coherently of small domestic matters, the first time she had done so since the death of her son.

Indeed, from that day her madness receded, until only those who had known Mrs. Bell in happier times would have said she was in any way altered. The servants remarked, amongst themselves, that she had quite a different expression in her eyes now. She was willing to tolerate the infant’s presence to a certain extent, though as it grew older and obstreperously affectionate she became reserved and withdrawn, and endured its visits in tight-lipped silence. Mr. Bell, desperate to please his wife, took her away to the Continent when she was well enough to travel. In the pleasant air of Italy her spirits revived considerably. Husband and wife walked together, admired the scenery together, posed for portraits together, and were very nearly happy again.

The infant was left at No. 10 with the servants.

Robert Richardson had served with distinction in the 32nd Regiment of Foot, and had in fact had his left leg shot from under him at the battle of Waterloo. Invalided out of the Army, he had lived with a married sister while seeking employment. Having had some experience as a footman before joining the Army, and being possessed of an upright and dignified bearing not with standing his prosthetic limb, he was shortly hired as butler at No. 10 Albany Crescent. This proved satisfactory to all persons concerned.

He expressed no opinions on the irregular manner in which young Edward Fairfax (or Bell, as the infant was hastily dubbed, even though it was obvious there was no need to engage in any further charades for Mrs. Bell’s benefit) had entered the household. If he felt it was a shame that Mrs. Bell never so much as inquired after the little creature, or that Mrs. Melpomene Lodge seemed too sternly efficient, more like a sergeant herself than someone intended to care for a child, Richardson kept his reservations to himself.

The below-stairs servants were more forthcoming in their judgment. While no one felt Mrs. Bell could be blamed for going mad, her lack of affection for young Edward was roundly condemned, and it was felt that Mrs. Lodge was a cold-hearted bitch who had no business minding babies. Consequently on her days out the boy was brought downstairs
and tended by Cook and the parlor maids, who showered him with affection.

He was such a fine big boy, after all! Not, perhaps, the prettiest baby Cook had ever seen; his eyes were a peculiar pale blue and a bit small. On the other hand, he was good-tempered, seldom cried even when teething (which occurred very early), and suffered no infantile rashes, colds, fevers or indeed any kind of illness whatsoever. He throve on the nasty mixture Mrs. Lodge fed him, compounded of scalded cow’s milk, catnip tea and certain arcane powders Mrs. Lodge did not deign to name for the rest of the staff.

In fact, Edward was more than healthy; he was remarkably intelligent. Violet, the between-stairs maid, discovered this when, at the age of eleven months, he suddenly recited back to her the entire text of “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.” She squealed in excitement and tried him on “Ring Around the Roses” and “London Bridge Is Falling Down,” both of which he repeated note perfect. Violet ran and fetched Cook, who listened in disbelief and then ran and fetched Richardson. Edward was rewarded with bread and jam for his brilliance and roundly cosseted, though the below-stairs staff resolved thereafter to mind what they said around the child.

Edward’s infancy passed without other incident, largely unnoticed by his adoptive parents. Richardson wondered uncomfortably whether some male oughtn’t take a hand with the child, lest he warp under too much womanly influence. Signs that this might be the case were already evident, for young Edward had taken to carrying around a doll he referred to as his baby. He spent hours pretending to feed it with a spoon, or bathing it, or rocking it to sleep while he sang to it, or combing its hair. At last Richardson was moved to confront Mrs. Lodge, asking her whether she didn’t feel such play was unnatural for a boy.

Mrs. Lodge had looked at him in that chilly way she had—
no more feeling than a waxwork statue
, Richardson thought to himself—and then, to his surprise, she had agreed that he was perfectly correct. The doll was confiscated forthwith and thrown out. Edward had wept inconsolably. Richardson had then overheard Mrs. Lodge telling Edward that
only weak and inferior children cried. She added that he had no right to complain, as he was nothing but a bastard, no matter how well-born, and he was lucky he wasn’t out in the street begging for his bread.

White with fury, Richardson had summoned Mrs. Lodge and sacked her forthwith. She had merely shrugged and decamped with her trunk, asking for no references, nor leaving any forwarding address. Her departure had provoked fresh tears in her former charge, as another piece of the only world he had ever known vanished. In vain Richardson offered his watch as a plaything. With slightly better success, he removed his prosthesis and showed Edward how it fastened to the stump of his knee. Edward then wished to know what had happened to the rest of Richardson’s leg, and so Richardson told him all about the battle of Waterloo. Edward listened with wide eyes.

A governess was hired after that and duly installed in the schoolroom, but as far as Edward was concerned Richardson was his true teacher. Richardson was consulted, at any hour of the night or day, on such diverse matters as whether Robinson Crusoe had been a real man, whether the ogre Bonaparte were really dead or just shamming, and whether the holes in Jesus’ hands and feet had healed over by now.

As the years rolled along, the questions tended to need answers more urgently: what, for example, was the best way to repair a hole in the plasterwork caused by a Guy Fawkes squib? How could one retrieve a tin sailboat from the bottom of the Hyde Park Serpentine? Was there any reason to be alarmed by the new and peculiar sensations experienced when inadvertently witnessing a maid in her nightdress?

Christmases came and went without so much as a card from Mr. and Mrs. Bell, who had taken to spending their winters in the south of France. Edward saved his pocket money to buy trinkets as presents for the staff, or laboriously made gifts of penwipers, or needle cases, or pasteboard boxes decorated with glued-on seashells. He took his Christmas dinner below stairs and his Twelfth Cake too, and Cook and Richardson between them always stage-managed it so that Edward never failed to get the slice with the sixpence.

But there was no concealing from the boy that other children had
parents who saw them on a daily basis, rather than at intervals of four or five months. Mr. Bell did endeavor to bring the occasional present back for Edward, and generally exchanged a few polite words with him at the breakfast table, for which Edward was desperately grateful. Still, the passing years only served to emphasize his nature as a changeling: by the age of nine Edward was already as tall as Mr. Bell, resembling him in no way. One afternoon he came to Richardson and, hesitantly, asked to know what a
bastard
might be?

Having given a not altogether satisfactory answer, Richardson later lined up the household and demanded to know which of the servants had used the offending word where Master Edward could hear. One and all solemnly swore they had not. Cook then pointed out that they all knew Master Edward had an excellent memory, and only the other day had reminded her about the time she had burned the bottom out of the teakettle, which had happened when he had still been a tiny thing in long clothes.

Whether or not Master Edward remembered Mrs. Lodge, it was plain her words had had their effect upon him. As he neared his eleventh birthday the boy grew sullen and silent, more given to reckless escapades. Only Richardson’s stories of the War seemed to hold his full attention. He asked Richardson how old one must be to join the Army, and whether Richardson thought a very tall boy might pass for an older one.