Paying Guests (20 page)

‘I had best tell you all, Mum,’ she said, still with that husky note in her voice. ‘Or all that might be –’ and Tilly looked at her encouragingly her head to one side, but saying nothing.

‘He said we was to be wed,’ Eliza said after another long pause. ‘Soon, he said, and I believed him. Why should I not?’

‘Yes, I understand, Eliza,’ Tilly was soothing. ‘But he lied, so you aren’t to blame for –’

‘I am to blame for being such a fool as to believe him,’ Eliza said passionately. ‘To believe his talk about the high holiness of love and how a man has to be a man and a truly loving woman proves her love and never thinks there is anything wrong in what passes between man and woman when they are husband and wife. Or about to be –’

She was not looking at Tilly now, but down into her cup, and Tilly looked at her and understood all of it. And she took a long slow breath.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Indeed, Mum, oh dear is all you can say, ain’t it? I should ha’ known better, and I’m ashamed and – oh, it’s got me to thinkin’, Mum, as I’m no better than my old mother who was just like that – I mean, men could – they could tell her anything and she always believed ‘em and that was how it was that she – well, there was a lot of us, and for all I know she’s still at it. I could have a dunnamany brothers and sisters,’ and no Pa to show for it.

‘Yes,’ Tilly murmured, not knowing what else she could say.

‘And suppose I’m like her in every way?’ Eliza said with sudden heat. ‘She allus said a man had nobbut to look at her and she fell. Suppose I’m just such another? I shall have to go, Mum, if I’m in the pudding club. I’ll be out on the street with a little one and –’

‘I never heard such nonsense in my life,’ Tilly said strongly, her face bright with anger. ‘You out on the street? Not while I have breath in this body, Eliza Horace, and never let me hear you suggest otherwise! It is wicked even to consider it possible that I would show such uncharitable behaviour to anyone, let alone to one who has stood my good friend these many years!’

Eliza put her cup down in its saucer with a clatter and leaned forwards and seized Tilly’s hands.

‘Oh, Mum, I knows that! I didn’t mean to say it’d be you as would send me there, but me as would go. It may be as I’m frettin’ too soon, and I ain’t in trouble, but I got the notion so firm in my head that I am that I can’t think of nothing else. And I’ve got to think about it, ain’t I? I can’t just pretend to myself there’s nothin’ to fret over on account of there
might
be. And I couldn’t stay here
with my head up if I was to – if I’m like my ma and been caught by that heap of – well, if I’d been caught. I wouldn’t do it to this house, Mum. I’d have more respect for you and your guests. But I’ve been thinking all morning, all day really, and I know one way out of it, Mum. I do, I really do. If you’ll agree, Mum.’

‘I’m not sure what you –’ Tilly began, staring down at Eliza, startled now. She had never seen Eliza like this. Her eyes were wide and glittering and there was a dampness over her forehead and a row of beads of sweat along her upper lip. She was breathing rapidly and looked so different it was almost as though she were another person entirely.

‘Hear me out, Mum, oh please, do hear me out before you says anything. Here you are, a respectable widow lady with a son near grown but still very young – if you was to be a philanthropist and adopt a baby what had no parents, why you’d be regarded by all your neighbours as the good woman you are. They need never know it wasn’t a true orphan but one that – well, they’d not know. I’d be here to care for the baby, but he or she would have a name and a respectable home and a future. If I can’t do that, well, out of here I’d have to go to fettle as best I might and it’s no start for any child. The best thing I could do for any baby of mine is to ask you to have the care of him – with me to help the way I did for Duff. And oh, Mum, we could manage lovely, I know we could. My name’d be respectable still and the baby’d be better off – and I’d work myself to death for you for the rest of my life, Mum, that I would. Please say you’d do it for me, Mum, if it’s needful? Please to say you’ll think of it!’

ELIZA WAS THE one who first noticed the clock, in spite of her misery, and leapt to her feet in a state of near panic for it was far closer to dinner time than it should be for the amount of work she still had to do. Although her steak pies were baking nicely and filling the kitchen with a rich savoury fragrance she still had to make the hollandaise sauce for her poached halibut, and carve and arrange on a platter the boiled mutton in capers that was simmering on the top of the fire and of course check that the damson tarts, Duff’s favourite, were ready to go into the ovens as soon as the meat pies came out. There was the vegetable soup to be strained and sieved, the autumn green beans to be boiled, the potatoes to be beaten to a mash, and various other side dishes fetched from the cold larder and dressed fit for the table. She was in a clamour of busyness and begged Tilly to leave her to get on with it with the help of the maids who would be down soon to join her endeavours, and above all to worry no more.

‘For there’s little enough we can do about my situation tonight,’ she said, with a return of her usual practicality. ‘And I would never have spoken of it now if that Dora hadn’t – well, let be. If you’ll keep her above stairs, Mum, and remember you said you’d find her a new place and see her off, I’ll be fit enough. Don’t you look so fretful, Mum, for I can’t bear to see you upset by me – just you go and dress ready for Mr Duff.’

All of which Tilly had to agree made sense. So after saying a rapid farewell to Jem, still alone in the drawing room, she put on her
newest dinner gown, a confection of velvet and faille in rose pink and black with a low round neck that almost displayed her shoulders though not quite as much as full evening dress would, and ruffled sleeves to the elbows in the style that was currently high fashion, and dressed her hair with a less exuberant but equally attractive version of Sophie’s high plaits and curled tresses. She looked at herself critically in the mirror, noting the way the black velvet set off the pallor of her throat and how the pink braiding in the trimming at the bust and over the hips matched precisely the shade of the rose faille underskirt. Duff would have been seeing ladies in the most costly and modish of toilettes this past week and she was determined, a little childishly she feared, to show him that even ladies who took in paying guests to make a living could be elegant and good to look at.

But when he actually arrived she forgot her gown and her hair and her appearance altogether at the sound of a four-wheeler clattering to a stop at her door, and went flying down the stairs like a child to throw open the front door and welcome him home.

He came in like a small cyclone, clearly bursting with health and frankly in need of a bath, for he smelled tired and sweaty, and looked less than half as elegant as when he had left a week ago. He hugged Tilly close and laughed when she made a small grimace.

‘Oh, Mamma, am I all countrified and stuffy? I would not be a bit surprised if I were, for I must tell you that taking a bath at Paton Place is even worse than it is at school, where we must all share the space. At school at least it was tolerably warm in summer but at Paton they are very Spartan. Cold water most of the time – there is always a shortage of hot – and the most draughty bathroom I have ever been in. I have yearned for a little comfort, Mamma. It’s clear to me that dukes and their families have no feelings, or not the sort we have. The hardest and lumpiest of beds and always chilled to the marrow even in this pleasant weather – now do take care, man.’ He whirled as the cabbie came toiling in with an assortment of bundles and boxes, including the handsome game bag that Tilly had bought him.

‘Here you are, Ma!’ he said cheerfully, thrusting it at her. ‘I’ve fetched you three brace of plump birds – I can’t pretend I shot ‘em for I brought down hardly any, but they had a good bag and this is my share. I imagine Eliza will enjoy dealing with ‘em though do warn her that they’re fairly full of lead. I nearly broke a tooth eatin’ a roast partridge last night!’

She looked at him closely and her heart began to lift a little. There was no sign of lugubriousness, no shadow behind his eyes that might suggest his visit had brought him anything but pleasure. But, she thought as he once again dived at the cabbie and supervised the unloading of his luggage, so that he might tip him, if he and his wretched Lord Patrick, or whatever his name was, had been indulging in – well, whatever it was that Duff had hinted at, would he not be just as cock-a-hoop with himself as he clearly was now? Or if not, would he be displaying signs of grief at being parted unwillingly from his intimate? It was very difficult to judge, and she thought with a certain inner sinking sensation – I shall have to ask him. And I don’t know how to.

‘So, Ma, have you missed me?’ he demanded as at last he was ready to follow Dora upstairs with his luggage after Rosie, who was also hovering, had taken the game down to Eliza. ‘I hope not, on the one hand, but on the other –’

‘Of course we missed you. Just as we did all the time you were at school. I love to have you here by my side.’ She held his arm closely tucked into hers as they went side by side up the stairs. ‘I think I need not ask you if you enjoyed yourself.’

‘It was very fine, Ma,’ he said. ‘I had no idea shooting could be so enjoyable. Though seeing so much blood on some of the birds was disagreeable – but Patrick says it’s much bloodier when they hunt, you know, and wants me to come and try my hand at that. But I am not so sure – the gear, you know – after all, all this was costly, was it not?’

They had reached his room where Dora was already unpacking his bags, sorting out a fairly monstrous heap of soiled linen for Mrs Skinner, and he indicated his shooting clothes and guns that were laid out on the bed to one side; Dora was avoiding them with some
trepidation, clearly afraid they would go off and kill her at the least touch.

‘The guns are but hired, of course, Duff,’ Tilly said. ‘And as for the rest – well, your needs are of prime importance to me, but I had not expected you to develop the – ah – tastes of a country gentleman of the sort your friend is. I had expected you to continue to be a town person. We must discuss at some point the sort of career that will be suitable for you and set about arranging matters so that you may pursue it. And country recreations may not fit in well with whatever it is.’

He did not precisely scowl, but he looked a little less pleased with himself. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said after a moment. ‘I dare say I was getting a touch high flown in my ideas, thinking I might hunt at Paton this winter. From all accounts, though, it’s a spiffing good thing to do and I should enjoy it above everything, Patrick says.’

‘Ah – you – ah – were you very happy to be with Patrick again?’ she ventured as Dora, with a little bob and an armful of soiled linen, at last left the room and they could be alone.

‘Happy? Well, I told you Mamma. I had a most excellent time, the shooting was –’

‘I was not asking about the shooting but about – the other entertainment,’ Tilly said carefully and he glanced at her sharply and then away.

‘Well there were a lot of people there, don’t you know. Some of the fellows from school – not all the ones I quite liked, but one or two of my own set and that was agreeable. Oh, and some girls.’

He said it almost disparagingly and she looked at him sharply, trying not to be hopeful. ‘Girls? Did you not enjoy their company?’

‘It is difficult to do so when generally speaking they sit with their heads together giggling over nonsense. Or spend all their time making eyes at chaps they know to have titles or to be rich.’

She smiled involuntarily. ‘Does that mean none of them made eyes at you, my dear?’

He reddened. ‘Well, actually there was one who – but since she also seemed interested in Patrick, simply because he is a lord, I did
not find her company at all to my taste. I regard such snobbery as quite beyond the pale.’

She let her lips quirk again, forbearing to remind him that he had himself been quite content to be snobbish over her means of keeping herself and him in comfort. There would be small value in doing so; it would only make him irritable, and she much preferred him agreeable. Was she spoiling him, letting him have too much leeway? she wondered briefly. Perhaps. But then he was her only child, and likely to remain so. At which thought a vision of Eliza’s anguished pleading face rose into her mind’s eye: ‘Please say you’ll do it for me, Mum! Please say you’ll think of it!’ Not now, she told herself, not now, and fixed her attention on Duff again.

‘But you had a happy time in all,’ she said to Duff and he smiled and stretched and pulled off his jacket as Dora came back into the room, this time bearing a jug of hot water.

‘It was a most agreeable time,’ he said. ‘But never fear that I am not happy to be home again. For I am.’ He came and hugged her and she pulled back and made a face at him, laughing.

‘Dearest Duff, you must take a bath at once! The hot water, Dora, may be taken to the bathroom and a bath filled for Mr Duff. He’ll be there directly.’