A Strange Likeness (2 page)

‘Stacy is both good and steady, which is what you need in a husband. You have a fine mind, Eleanor, but you have been misusing it. On the other hand, apart from this folly with young Swain, you do not lack application. I have no wish for you to go the way that Ned is going.'

Eleanor was now crying bitterly. ‘Oh, no, Grandfather, I don't wish to live in London. I've always hated it there. Please let me stay here. I promise to be good in future.'

‘No, Eleanor. You would have had to leave soon in any case, with or without your mother. You are merely going earlier than I intended. Your mother has been told and she does not like this, either, but she lost control of both you and Ned long ago, and we must all, I fear, pay for our failings as well as our sins.'

That was the end. There was no use in pleading—and no dignity, either. Kind Sir Hart might be, but he was also firm, and what he decreed was law.

‘You may go, Granddaughter. Tomorrow you must prepare to leave.'

Eleanor rose and walked to the door, where she turned and looked at him. Her face was white but the tears had stopped falling.

‘I will be good, I promise. I don't want to be a fine lady, I despise them, but I will become one for your sake, Grandfather.'

‘And for yours, too, Eleanor. For yours, too.'

London, 1841:
Monde
and
demi-monde

M
r Alan Dilhorne, ‘the person from Australia', as some butlers were later to call him, stood in the foyer of the Haymarket Theatre, London, on his second night in the capital.

Tired after the long journey from Sydney, he had gone straight to bed at Brown's Hotel when he had arrived there, but a day's sleep had restored him to full vigour and a desire to explore the land which had exiled his father. He looked eagerly about him at the fashionable crowd, many of whom stared at his clothing which, however suitable it had been in Sydney, branded him an outsider here.

Curious stares never troubled Alan. His confidence in himself, helped by his superb physique and his handsome face, was profound. It was backed by the advice offered him by his devious and exacting father.

‘Work hard and play hard' was his maxim, which Alan had no difficulty in following. He had come to London to carry out a mission for his family which promised him
a busy time in the old country. He was not going to allow that to prevent him from enjoying life to the full while he executed it.

He had walked through the
demi-monde
on his way to the theatre, and it was obviously much larger and livelier than its counterpart in Sydney.

A hand fell on his shoulder and spun him half around. A man of his own age, the late twenties, fashionably dressed, slightly drunk already, was laughing in his face.

‘Ned! What the devil are you doing here so early, and in those dam'd awful clothes, too?'

‘Yes,' chimed his companion. ‘Not like you, Ned, not at all. Fancy dress, is it?'

‘Ned?' said Alan slowly. ‘I'm not Ned.'

The small group of young gentlemen before him looked suitably taken aback.

‘Come on, Ned. Stop roasting us. What's the game tonight, eh?'

‘Not roasting you,' said Alan firmly. ‘I'm Alan Dilhorne, from Sydney, New South Wales. Don't know any Neds, I'm afraid.'

He had deepened his slight Australian accent and saw eyes widen.

‘Good God, I do believe you're
not
Ned,' said his first accoster.

‘Bigger in the shoulders,' offered one young fellow, who was already half supported by his friends. ‘Strip better than Ned, for sure. Bit soft, Ned.' Other heads nodded at this, to Alan's amusement.

The first speaker put out a hand. ‘Well, Not Ned, I'm Frank Gresham, and you're like enough to Ned to deceive anyone. I'd have taken you for him on a fine day with the hounds running.'

Alan liked the look of the handsome young man before
him, whom he took to be younger than he was—in contrast to himself; he looked more mature than his years.

‘I'd like to see Ned. Ned who?'

‘Ned Hatton. Not here yet, obviously. Always late, Ned. Look here, Dilhorne, is it? Meet us in the foyer in the first interval and you shall see him. And if this play is as dam'd boring as I expect it will be, we'll make a night of it together.'

Most of them looked as though they had made more than a night of it already.

‘You got that shocking bad hat and coat in Australia, I suppose?' said Gresham's half-drunk companion, introduced as Bob Manners. ‘Better get Ned to introduce you to his tailor—won't want his face walking around in that!'

‘Shame on you, Bob,' said Gresham genially. ‘Fellow can't help where he comes from.'

He put his arm through Alan's—he had obviously been adopted as ‘one of theirs' on the strength of his likeness to Ned—whoever he was. ‘Buy you a drink before the play, Dilhorne—girls'll look better with a drop inside.'

Bells were already ringing to signal the start of the entertainment, but Gresham and his chums took no notice of them. The man at the bar knew him.

‘Yes, m'lord, what is it tonight?'

So Frank, who had walked him over, was a lord and Ned, who had still not arrived, was his friend. The foyer emptied a little, but Alan's new friends continued to drink for some time before they decided that they were ready to see the play.

He made his way to his seat as quietly as he could, so as not to disturb the audience or the others in the box. Frank and his companions, who were a little way away from him, were not so considerate. They entered their box
noisily and responded to the shushing of the audience by blowing kisses and, in Bob Manners' case, by dripping the contents of a bottle of champagne on to the heads of the people below.

Alan, looking eagerly around the garish auditorium, expected them to be thrown out, but the other people in his box, half-amused, half-annoyed, knew the revellers.

‘It's Gresham's set again,' said one stout burgher wisely to his equally plump wife.

‘Disgusting,' she returned. ‘They should be thrown out, or not allowed in.'

‘Manager can't throw Gresham out—too grand.'

The spectacle on the stage amused Alan, although it did not engage him. Half his mind was on his recent encounter, and when the curtain fell at the first interval he was down the stairs in a flash to see Ned, who wore his face.

Gresham's friends, who had quietened a little after their entrance, had further annoyed the audience by leaving noisily before the first act ended, and were already busy drinking when Alan arrived in the bar. He was loudly greeted, and he guessed, correctly, that his new acquaintances were bored and needed the diversion which he was providing.

Well, that did not trouble him—who knew how this odd adventure might end?

‘It's “Not Ned”, the Australian,' proclaimed Gresham. ‘Here, Ned, here's your look-alike.' And he tapped on the shoulder the tall man standing beside him.

Ned Hatton turned to confront himself. And it was a dam'd disturbing experience, he reported afterwards. All he said at the time was, ‘Jupiter! You've stolen my face.'

Alan was amused as well as startled by seeing his own face without benefit of his shaving mirror.

‘As well say you've stolen mine.'

‘Not quite your voice, though,' offered Manners. ‘Nor your clothes. But, dammit, you're even the same height.'

‘I'm Alan Dilhorne, from Sydney, New South Wales,' said Alan, putting out a large hand to Ned for it to be grasped by one very like his own. Yes, Manners had been right: Ned was softer.

Fascinated, Ned shook the offered hand. ‘Well, Alan Dilhorne, what you most need is a good tailor.'

‘And a good barber,' commented Gresham critically. ‘Although nothing could improve the colour—as shocking as yours, Ned.'

General laughter followed this. Alan's amusement at their obsession with his clothes and appearance grew.

The bells rang for the start of the next act. None of his new friends took the slightest notice of them. Alan debated with himself. Should he go back, alone, to his box? Or stay with this chance-met pack of gentlemen and aristocrats whom in normal circumstances he would never have met at all?

Fascination at meeting his exact double kept him with them.
Almost
exact was more accurate, for Manners was right: Ned was certainly not in good shape, would not strip well, and was, in all respects, a softer, smoother version of himself.

‘Well, my boys, let's be off,' said Gresham. ‘A dam'd dull play, and a dam'd unaccommodating audience. Give it a miss, Dilhorne, and come with us. Let's find out if you can hold your drink better than Ned. Looking at you, I'd bet on it.' He clapped the protesting Ned on the shoulder. ‘Come now, Ned, you know you've less head for it than Manners here, and that's saying something!'

He removed the stovepipe hat which Ned had just put on and tossed it into the street. ‘Last one to leave pays
for the rest. First one buys Dilhorne a drink.' And the whole company streamed convivially out of the theatre, bound for another night on the town.

 

A couple of hours later Alan found that he could hold his liquor better than any of them, including Ned, which was not surprising, because although he appeared to keep up with them he took care, by a number of stratagems taught him by his father, not to drink very much.

They had been in and out of several dives, had argued whether to go on to the Coal Hole or not, and at the last moment had become engaged in a general brawl with some sturdy bruisers guarding a gaming hell just off the Haymarket. Ned expressed a wish to go to Rosie's. Gresham argued that Rosie's was dull these days. Alan intervened to prevent another brawl, this time between the two factions into which the group had divided.

His suggestion that they should split up and meet again another night met with drunken agreement. He announced his own intention to stay with Ned.

‘Mustn't lose my face,' he announced, and accordingly the larger group, under Gresham, reeled erratically down the road, to end up God knows where. Ned and another friend, whose name Alan never discovered because he never met him again, made for Rosie's, which had the further attraction for Ned of being near to where they were, thus doing away with the need for a lengthy walk or a cab.

Rosie's turned out to be a gaming hell-cum-brothel similar to many in Sydney, though larger and better appointed. Hells like Rosie's were sometimes known as silver hells, to distinguish them from the top-notch places to one of which Gresham had led the other party. Ned, though, liked the easier atmosphere of these minor dives
rather than the ones which the great names of the social world patronised. Besides, they were rarely raided by the authorities.

The gaming half of Rosie's was a large room with card tables at one end and supper tables spread with food and drink at the other. The food was lavish, and included oysters, lobster patties and salmis of game and salmon. The drink was varied: port, sherries, light and heavy wines stood about in bottles and decanters.

Alan, who was hungry, sampled the food and found it good. The drink he avoided, except for one glass of light wine which he disposed of into a potted palm, remembering his father, the Patriarch's, prudent advice.

Disliking bought sex—another consequence of his father's advice—he smilingly refused Ned's suggestion that he pick one of the girls and sample the goods upstairs.

‘I'm tired,' he said. ‘Much too tired for exhausting games in bed. I think that I'd prefer a quiet hand of cards—or even to watch other people play.'

‘Suit yourself,' said Ned agreeably. He was always agreeable, Alan was to find, and this was a handicap as well as a virtue, since little moved him deeply.

‘Play cards by all means,' Ned continued. ‘Girls are better, though. I always score with the girls, much more rarely at cards. Don't wait for me, Dilhorne. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon at Stanton House.' He had earlier invited Alan to visit him at his great-aunt Almeria's, his base when he was in London.

He went upstairs on the arm of the Madame, a pretty girl in tow, leaving Alan with the other highly foxed member of the party slumped on a bench near the gaming tables. Alan made himself comfortable in a large armchair which gave him a good view of the room. Sitting there,
half-asleep, he watched two well-dressed members of the
ton
enter. One of them flapped an idle hand at him, and murmured, ‘Evening, Ned.'

Alan did not disabuse him. He could tell that they were both slightly tipsy, at the voluble stage, and when they seated themselves at a table near him the larger, noisier one began chaffing the other about a visitor he was expecting to arrive at his office on the following morning—‘Or rather, this morning, to have it proper.' He had apparently reached the pedantic stage of drunkenness.

‘From New South Wales, I understand, Johnstone.'

The other laughed humourlessly. ‘Yes—if it isn't bad enough that I have to earn a living at all, I'm expected to dance attendance on a pack of colonial savages who have set up in London and are sending one of their cubs to tell us our business. I understand that Father Bear went out there in chains. What a set!'

‘And when do you expect Baby Bear?'

‘Tomorrow, as I said. He sent me a note today, telling me that I am to have the honour of his presence at ten. The honour of his presence! And at ten! I don't recognise the time. Well, Baby Bear will have to wait. He proposed the time, not me. The honour of his presence, indeed!'

He choked with laughter again, spluttering through his drink, ‘Young Master Alan Dilhorne must fancy himself.'

Alan had early begun to suspect exactly who Johnstone was speaking of, and this last sentence confirmed it. The true son of his devious father, he gave nothing away. Johnstone had risen, looked over at him and said, ‘A game of cards, Ned?'

Alan nodded. At some point he would have to speak. He, and not his older twin, Thomas, had inherited their father's talent for mimicry. He tried out Ned's voice in
his head. It was light and careless, higher than his own, a very English upper-class drawl. He thought that he could pull it off. Impersonating Ned would be harder than some of the tricks he had played at home—but it would give him a different form of amusement.

Meantime, he warned himself, he must watch his vowels—it wouldn't hurt to appear to be a little drunk. Johnstone and his pal called in another man so that they could sit down in pairs to play piquet. Johnstone against Alan, and his friend against the stranger. Alan prayed that Ned would not return; he had said that he would not, but one thing was very plain: he was not reliable and said whatever pleased him at the time.

It soon became equally plain that, for Johnstone, Ned was a pigeon to be plucked. He assumed that Ned was both drunk and careless and his manner was lightly contemptuous. Well, he might be in for a surprise. Alan began by knocking over his glass of light wine and dropping his cards. He fell on to his hands and knees in order to pick them up, exclaiming, ‘The devil's in them tonight.'

He heard Johnstone and his friends, Lloyd and Fraser, laugh while he continued to offer them the picture of incompetence which they both expected from flighty Ned Hatton. All three, indeed, obviously regarded Ned as little better than a fool. Lloyd even winked at Johnstone when Alan dropped his cards again.