An Accomplished Woman (34 page)

While Mr Beck continued
unabashed, Mr Allardyce’s looks showed that he was conscious of his loss of
composure. Giving Lydia his arm as they made their way to the stage where the
fireworks were preparing, he said, with a faintly forced note of urbanity:
‘Curious — curious thing. I have never been fond of enclosed space. Yet I have
found myself quite comfortable in a ship’s cabin on many an occasion. Perhaps
the difference is, there one may always leave the cabin, if only to stagger up
on deck and be ill. They do say Admiral Nelson suffers from seasickness, which
is another curious thing.’

‘Perhaps that is why he
achieves his dashing victories. He can hardly wait to have the battle over so
he can get back to dry land again.’

Mr Allardyce laughed so
extravagantly at this that she concluded he was still not quite himself. Well,
they none of them were; and she was glad of the roll of drums that announced
the fireworks, for the fireworks signalled the end of the evening — and that,
she felt, could not come too soon.

Unlit, the array of
rockets, Catherine wheels and fizgigs was impressive — the handbills had
advertised them as having been brought at great expense from China; but when
the liveried servants of the town corporation began lighting them, it appeared
that the fireworks had suffered something in their long passage. There was more
sputtering than grandeur. Rockets rose lethargically, popped and plopped. Lydia
was just reflecting on the aptness of this conclusion when the display suddenly
and accidentally turned much livelier. A lit rocket came off its mounting at an
angle, skittering and bouncing through the rest of the array and setting off
everything at once. Now came the appropriate gasps, as the night sky bloomed in
brilliance — then cries of alarm. The rogue rocket had made an explosive
consummation with a large firecracker, and a shower of papery gunpowdery sparks
was falling into the crowd on this side of the stage. Heads ducked, resourceful
ladies flung up parasols as the hissing gobbets landed in the grass. One came
down near — very near. Lydia saw Mr Allardyce seize Juliet’s arm and pull her
aside. It missed her — but not quite. Phoebe shrieked, pointing. A smell like
ironing. The short train of Juliet’s white muslin gown was blackening — then
crackling into flame.

Mr Allardyce beat
desperately at it with his bare hands. Phoebe screamed. Someone called for
water, someone else cried to Juliet to roll, roll. Then Mr Durrant, in
waistcoat and shirt sleeves, was thrusting Mr Allardyce aside, flourishing out
a great blanket. Where—? His coat, of course. He flung it down on the burning
train and then flung himself bodily on top of it. Lydia’s paralysed mind
registered, inconsequently, that it was the handsome new cut-away.

Mr Durrant rose. In an
instant, where there had been peril and panic, there was only a scorched smell
and two ruined garments.

‘Thank you, sir — a
thousand thanks.’ Juliet’s voice shook, and she was as white as her gown, but
she and Mr Durrant seemed the calmest people there. Phoebe was in tears, Mr
Beck was trying ineffectually to soothe her: a gentleman arrived with a jug of
water, and Lydia with difficulty dissuaded him from throwing it over Juliet to
be on the safe side.

‘No harm done, I think,’
Mr Durrant said, picking up his coat and shaking it out. ‘You are not hurt,
Miss Allardyce?’

‘I — not at all — are
you?’

‘Getting up again was
the hardest part. My old bones. But, Mr Allardyce, I am afraid you have burned
your hands.’

‘That’s nothing —
nothing — my only regret is that I cannot shake yours, sir, in profound
gratitude.’

‘In a way my tailor is
to be thanked,’ Mr Durrant said, bundling his coat under his arm. ‘An
old-fashioned fellow who will not cut tight across the shoulders, which means I
can take my coat off without the aid of two strong lads and a winch.’ He
glanced back at the stage. ‘The conflagration seems to be over, but we had
better move away to be sure.’

‘And my dressmaker
assures me that trains are
de rigueur,’
said Juliet, shaking out her
skirts: trembling, but very nearly composed. ‘No: all my thanks are to you, Mr
Durrant, but I will not embarrass you with them. Miss Rae, please be easy.
Robert, you must go home at once and see to your hands. Take a chair. Butter or
goose-fat—’

‘I take a chair?
You,
my dear Juliet, you must take a chair — I shall fetch one directly . . .’

‘Good Lord, I have never
taken a chair in my life, and don’t propose . . . Well, if you insist . . .’

It was the breaking up
of the party, and its exceptional circumstances, that finally made them natural
with one another. Phoebe rallied herself, Mr Beck was genuinely anxious in his
hopes that no one had come to hurt, and Mr Durrant had ceased brooding over
Hugh Hanley. Lydia, shakily, was glad of it; but she doubted that harmony was
sufficiently established for anyone to make the customary jaunty suggestion:
we
must do this again!

Phoebe had many
misgivings about the dinner at Queen Square appointed for the next day. After
such a shocking event, the Allardyces might be unequal to company — for her
part she had been dreaming of fireworks and flaming dresses all night; and then
besides there were poor Mr Allardyces hands — for she recalled burning her fingers
on a pair of curling-tongs once, and how painful they had been the next day;
and then some superstitious part of her, untouched by the kirk, saw ill-omen in
their meeting together again so soon. Lydia was kept busy with reassurance.
There was a note from Mr Allardyce, assuring them oftheir health and spirits,
and looking forward to their company later, and, as she pointed out, written in
as elegant a hand as ever. As for further disasters, they were surely most
unlikely at a dinner party, certainly compared with a firework display.

‘There is always the
peril of a splash of hot gravy, or a fishbone in the throat, or an apoplexy
brought on by the sudden popping of a cork — but these, you know, are risks we
run every time we go into dinner,’ Lydia concluded, and was rewarded with a
smile at last. She might have added that if there were any danger to be
apprehended at Queen Square, it was that of being talked to death by Mrs
Allardyce; but as Phoebe persisted in thinking well of her, and actually looked
forward to meeting the old harridan again, Lydia held her peace.

The optimistic note was
confirmed by the fortuitous arrival of Phoebe’s new gown. Diaphanous silver and
white, it was in the purest, most waistless and Grecian fashion, to which
Phoebe needed to add only a plain necklace and her beauty to suggest a
classical maiden rustling through a grove while the gods battled each other for
her favours. Thankfully Lydia was secured by wisdom and experience from the
futile vanity of envy, for otherwise it would have made her sick to look at
her.

‘Well — I will do, I
suppose,’ Phoebe said, looking doubtfully in her mirror. ‘I am glad it has
come, for the dressmaker was Mrs Allardyce’s recommendation, and she would be
sure to ask about it. Also—’ she swallowed nervously ‘— also I suspicion dinner
there will be a rather grand affair.’

Lydia had no doubt that
it would be: Mrs Allardyce would make sure of that, both in honour of Phoebe’s
fifty thousand, and as a declaration that her family was worthy of it. She was
not wrong. Quantities of flowers, wax candles, and ice, footmen to wait at
table — one or two of them evincing a certain unfamiliarity with the layout of
the dining-room, suggestive of the hired waiter — choice wines and Frenchified
sauces: all declared a desire to impress, quite at odds with Mrs Allardyce’s
brazen declaration: ‘You must forgive my asking you to such a plain family
dinner, Miss Rae, Miss Templeton. Living quietly as a widow, I have quite got
out of the habit of anything else.’

Whether the two high-cravated
and interchangeable gentlemen and the ageless female in crepe counted as family
Lydia was not to discover; they were plainly there to make up the numbers, and
to show a becoming subservience to their hostess. A much more important
addition to the party was Mr Durrant.

He had called that
morning to enquire after the health of Mr and Miss Allardyce: had been loaded
with thanks and compliments, and an absolute insistence made on his joining
them for dinner in the evening. So he confessed to Lydia, in an awkward mutter,
when they gathered in the drawing-room before going in. It was very natural: he
was the hero of the hour: Mr Allardyce’s cordial looks, and Juliet’s warm
attention expressed it; so, more volubly, did Mrs Allardyce, though not without
some hints that if
she
had been there, she would have taken the
situation so thoroughly in hand that the fireworks would never have gone wrong
at all.

Lydia was not displeased
to see Mr Durrant made much of. For once he had certainly earned that respect,
which he was too often inclined to regard as his due without doing anything to
merit it. She admired his quiet discomfort with the subject, as she had admired
his presence of mind last night. It would not do to be admiring him too much,
of course; but she was saved from that by amusement at his awkward attempts to
speak of something else — which, given his habitual scorn of small-talk,
resembled the efforts of a hound to perform the little tricks of a lap-dog.

Juliet, who was able to
talk quite coolly of her misadventure, presently saw his unease with the
subject, and turned the conversation to the war news, on which they were still
engaged when he gave her his arm to go in to dinner. At table they continued
solidly in talk. Lydia, looking on, felt a mild pity for Juliet, who had yet to
learn that bringing Mr Durrant out was a disappointing process, and that he
would soon go in again as smartly as a mechanical figure on a Swiss clock, with
a snap of the door behind him.

No such difficulty with Mrs
Allardyce: her peremptory tones could be heard all along the table, though it
was Phoebe, on her right, who was being chiefly favoured with her discourse.
There was much on her son’s future career, which she had taken as far as an
under-secretaryship before the soup was removed.

‘Oh,
astohisParliamentaryseat,ofcourse,thathadbetterbe
in the borough interest. Links with the county interest may always be forged
later, when he is settled. Tell me, Miss Rae, was your father ever a
Parliament-man?’

‘No, ma’am: I think his
friends urged it once, but he felt his health was unequal to the travelling it
would entail.’

‘Oh, well, wise in that
event: but Robert’s health has always been excellent. He is blessed with my own
sound constitution. Of course, when he
is
settled, it will be at no
great distance from London. A public man cannot afford to bury himself in the
wilds. Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire will do very well . . .’

‘It must be a great
comfort,’ Lydia ventured to Mr Allardyce, who was on her right, ‘knowing the
course of your future life so very precisely.’

‘Oh, no, you see there
is a little uncertainty,’ he answered readily, smiling, ‘Hertfordshire
or
Bedfordshire.
That is rather disturbing: but I am sure before long she will have fixed upon
the very spot of ground where I am to raise the familial standard, and then I
may rest easy.’

He seemed quite happy to
talk of this: Phoebe, on his other side, was wholly engrossed by her hostess:
Lydia seized her moment.

‘Well, be assured I mean
no disrespect to either party when I ask — being hopelessly inquisitive — do
your own plans coincide with these?’

‘My own plans are not
half so comprehensive. And such as they are, they share a debatable border with
my wishes. For the present, I look forward to nothing more than a return to
Vienna. Whatever the chances of the war, I think it is there that the great
matters will be decided. But talking to my fellows in the service has given me
a hankering for other postings too — I dream of St Petersburg, or even
Constantinople. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte: could anything have a more
splendid ring? I dare say the place is quite as dingy as sublime, but never
mind. Beyond that, Paris: that would be the ideal, if ever we can come to peace
with France again.’

‘That I can understand.
I was there before the Revolution. I wonder what it is like now. It cannot all
be guillotines and unshaven
sans-culottes
mutilating statues, can it?’

‘The Directory has put
an end to the excesses, and it seems that wealth is flourishing again, though at
the expense of corruption. Of course it will not be the old Paris of the
Bourbons — but I hope no one pretends to see perfection in that. You have been
much on the Continent, Miss Templeton?’

‘Only France, with my
father. My dream would have been to make the proper old-fashioned Grand Tour —
dozens of trunks, and letters of introduction, and a pompous tutor pointing out
the antiquities and shuddering at the habits of foreigners.’

‘And when you get home,
a crateful of Old Masters, painted last year in a Neapolitan workshop and
stained with tobacco. With relief you tuck into plain roast and boiled, and
consider yourself a finished man of the world.’ His eyebrow lifted, ironic,
also sympathetic. ‘At least, if you are a man. As a woman, of course, you have
never left home.’

‘Just so. Though there
are hopeful exceptions, like your sister. Tell me, what do they eat in Vienna?’