Animating Maria (13 page)

When they returned to Holles Street, it was to find Frederica Sunningdale waiting for them. She did not appear to find Beau silly in the least. She exclaimed in horror when she learned where they had been and suggested they change their clothes and burn those they had on immediately. Maria grew cross with her, for she longed to find someone to share her enthusiasm. At last Beau offered to drive Frederica back to Lady Bentley, with whom she and her parents were staying, and Frederica dimpled up at him and said shyly she would like that above all things.

‘And so Maria handed him over on a plate,’ grumbled Amy later as she watched Effy changing.

‘What are we to do?’ asked Effy.

‘I think Maria and Berham were made for each other. They call
us
eccentric! The best we can hope for is to Londonize the Kendalls into suitable in-laws!’

The Tribble sisters, Mr Haddon, and Mr Randolph were playing whist that evening when the Duke of Berham arrived. Maria flew to meet the duke, both hands held out in welcome, crying, ‘What have you planned?’

He smiled at the whist players and said, ‘Pray go on with your game while I talk to Miss Kendall.’ Amy and Effy gladly agreed. They had had an exhausting day and did not wish to be bored further with the duke’s philanthropy.

The duke had brought a block of drawing paper. He sat down on the sofa in front of the fire and Maria sat next to him. ‘This,’ he said, sketching rapidly, ‘is the outline of a house I own in Gloucester, a country mansion which I seldom use. Now the women and children could be housed there and that radical of a schoolteacher can be put in as overseer. Left to their own devices, I am sure those women would drink themselves to death and so they need to be apprenticed to a trade and earn their living. To that end, I will install weaving machines and they will be taught to make cloth. For the first year, they will be given low wages but will be well housed and well fed. If, by the end of the year, they have proved themselves reformed and responsible, then all the money they get from the sale of the cloth they may keep, or rather, will be kept for them, and a fund will be set up for the children.’

‘But some of them are so thin and ill, could they not have a period of rest until they are restored to health?’

‘The old schoolteacher, Hart, will see to it that no one is put to work who is unfit. He dislikes me and all I stand for intensely, and yet he will prove to be honest and kind.’

‘Do you own more property in London like John Street?’

‘I fear so. I can hardly go about moving wagonloads of paupers all over the country, so this is what I plan. Some of the property is on the point of falling down. So’ – he ripped off a page and began to sketch again – ‘I plan to build a whole village, say, or suburb, on the outskirts of London, with good solid houses and gardens to where the deserving cases can be moved.’

‘They could be built around a village green,’ said Maria, peering over his arm. ‘The children could play there. And you must remember shops. It will be of no use if they have to walk miles and miles to the nearest shops.’

He laughed, put an arm around her and hugged her. ‘I see you are out to ruin me,’ he said.

Maria blushed furiously and he quickly took his arm away. He looked across at the whist players but their heads were bent over their cards and they had seen nothing.

Maria could almost feel herself being pulled towards his body as though by a magnetic field. Something made her say quickly, ‘Is it not delightful? The Misses Tribble have invited my parents to London.’

‘Yes, delightful,’ he said in a colourless voice. After a few moments, he took his leave. He hoped the Tribbles would get Maria to break the engagement soon. Her parents were unbearable.

Beau seemed very much taken with Maria. Perhaps he would not mind her awful parents. Now the duke came to think of it, Maria seemed to be attracted by Beau. He experienced a sudden stabbing pain over his right eye. It had been a long day. He thought of Maria in Beau’s arms. They would make a handsome couple. And he would be free.

Free from what? demanded a nasty little voice in his head. Harris, the butler, patiently held his greatcoat and the duke stood staring into space. Oh dear, thought the duke. I will not fall in love with Maria Kendall. It just won’t do.

Maria went up to speak to Yvette and to play with baby George. For the first time it struck her that the dressmaker was surely in a painful situation. Yvette was quick and intelligent and a genius of a dressmaker. And yet because she was an unmarried mother, she would now be chained to the Tribbles for life and would be expected to be humbly grateful to them.

She told Yvette of the adventures of the day. Yvette was the first to show enthusiasm over the idea of training the women to be weavers. ‘It is most important for their dignity that they earn a wage,’ she said.

‘As you do,’ pointed out Maria.

‘My wage is a home for my baby and myself, and my food,’ said Yvette.

Maria looked at her round-eyed. ‘But surely they pay you a wage?’

Yvette gave a Gallic shrug. ‘They once paid me a little, but now I think they forget. But I lack nothing. Miss Amy and Miss Effy, when they buy cloth, they tell me, make yourself something as well, Yvette. The best of food from the kitchens comes to me and George. George will have a good education and will be loved. I do not need money. I have nowhere to go.’

‘If you did have money,’ asked Maria, ‘what would you really like to do?’

Yvette had been stitching a lace collar onto one of Effy’s gowns. She stopped sewing and let her normally busy hands rest on her lap. ‘I should open a little shop in the West End,’ she said. ‘I should create such fine fashions that royalty would send for me. I should be rich. I would have a fine travelling carriage lined with silk and I would go to Paris and find that wretch who ruined me and I would spit in his face.’

The anger and animation left her face as quickly as it had arisen and she began to sew busily, her smooth head bent over her work.

‘My parents are arriving on a visit,’ said Maria after an awkward pause.

‘That is nice.’

‘Well, not exactly. You see, they are very vulgar people and Miss Amy and Miss Effy plan to refine them.’

Yvette looked amused. ‘Miss Effy, yes, but Miss Amy’s speech is that of a sailor.’

‘Only when she is very angry. I do not think it will work. I think my parents will be furious.’

‘And you, mademoiselle, do you think your own parents vulgar?’

Maria blushed. ‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I am a great disappointment to them and they are a great disappointment to me. They brought me up to be a fine lady and did not think to refine themselves.’

‘I am sure Miss Amy and Miss Effy will think of something,’ said Yvette, straightening out a seam. ‘They shake people up and then something always happens. But they should be proud of you, your parents, I mean. You are to marry a duke.’

‘After he met them, I do not think he wanted to marry me any more,’ said Maria.

‘Then you are better off without him,’ said Yvette firmly. But Maria found that remark very cold comfort indeed.

By God! you never saw such a figure in your life as he is [the Prince Regent]. Then he speaks and swears so like old Falstaff, that damn me if I was not ashamed to walk into a room with him.

The Duke of Wellington

The arrival of Mr and Mrs Kendall threw the Tribble household into disarray. Trunks and trunks were loaded into the hall and up the stairs. Mr Kendall’s butler, Butterworth, resolved not to be done out of a trip to London, had changed himself into his master’s valet for the occasion, and, determined not to be intimidated by any grand London servants, stood ordering them about in a way that Effy was sure would soon prompt a revolution in the servants’ hall.

The Tribbles had planned to wait a few days until the Kendalls had settled in before dropping their bombshell, but Amy said they would not have a servant left unless she and Effy laid down the law as soon as possible.

But they bided their time until after dinner. Mrs Kendall kept exclaiming that Maria’s gowns looked odd and what had happened to all those pretty gowns she had brought to London? Amy, very stiffly on her stiffs, said haughtily that Maria’s wardrobe had been too provincial and had had to be altered. This led to an altercation in which both Kendalls told the Tribbles exactly how much each item they had bought for Maria had cost.

When dinner was over, Amy sent Maria to her room and then settled down to brave the Kendalls.

‘Mr and Mrs Kendall,’ she began, ‘what I have to say may distress you, but I want you to consider my remarks carefully – where are you going, Effy?’

‘I am just going to my room to get a clean handkerchief,’ said Effy weakly.

‘Sit down,’ commanded Amy. ‘The maid can get it. Now, Mr and Mrs Kendall, after his visit to you, the Duke of Berham decided he could not marry Maria and so he gave signs he wishes to cry off!’

‘Why?’ demanded both Mr and Mrs Kendall in unison.

‘He does not want you for in-laws,’ said Amy bluntly. ‘He thinks you are too vulgar.’

‘And after all the money we spent on him!’ raged Mr Kendall. ‘That jackanapes is not getting out of this engagement or I’ll have him dragged before every judge in the land. He shall not break my child’s heart.’

‘Your child is not in love with him. In fact, she was so sure he would regret the engagement after he had seen you that she promised to let him off the hook should that be the case. So far, he has obviously not reminded her of her promise. Instead, he has offered to pay us a handsome sum should we be able to help him get free.’

‘I don’t believe a word of this,’ said Mrs Kendall. ‘Lor! The lies Maria do tell.’

‘In this case, she is not lying. We invited you to London because we feel somehow that Maria and Berham are in their way well matched. It is not Maria who needs schooling,’ said Amy roundly while Effy moaned faintly in the background, ‘it is you yourselves.’

‘How dare you, you frazzled old hen,’ cried Mr Kendall. ‘I could buy and sell you.’

‘You cannot buy or sell the manners of a gentleman,’ said Amy, losing her temper. ‘If I am a frazzled old hen, then you, sir, are a fat, grunting porker, sweating in your stays, and stinking abominably of musk and unwashed arse.’

Mr Kendall rose to his feet and then went and helped his fat wife out of her chair. Holding Mrs Kendall’s hand, he turned to face the sisters.

‘We shall leave in the morning,’ he said, ‘and we shall take Maria with us, and you two will return every penny I’ve paid you or I will sue you, so help me.’

There was a long silence after they had left. Then, ‘How could you, Amy?’ demanded Effy. ‘Such vulgarity on your part, and such cruelty. You should have used finesse, delicacy.’

‘A fat lot of good you were,’ said Amy. ‘You left me to do the dirty work. Never mind, Berham will pay up. We shan’t lose.’

‘We will lose our successful reputation,’ said Effy tearfully. ‘I do not believe for a minute that Maria promised to release the duke. She made that up.’

‘I don’t think she did. She hadn’t that dreamy look in her eye when she told me. Look, Effy, it was all doomed to disaster anyway. Maria don’t want Berham and he don’t want her.’

‘But she won’t want to go home either,’ said Effy quietly. ‘She is probably crying her eyes out.’

But upstairs, Maria was still elated after her first successful battle ever with her parents. They had come to tell her to pack and leave. They had tried to berate her but with less than their usual force, for Yvette’s creation of a gown lent Maria dignity and poise. So Maria with flashing eyes told them she had never wanted the duke but that when she returned to Bath, things were going to be different in the Kendall household.

It was only long after they had gone that Maria began to feel very low. The duke would hear of her leaving and of the end of the engagement from the Tribbles. She would never see him again. She would never have a chance to watch the building of that model village. She began to retreat back into dreams. These were not her real parents. Her real parents were a foreign prince and princess who had smuggled her out of their country for fear she would be assassinated. She would be parading in the Pump Room in Bath among the querulous invalids when a group of exotically dressed warriors would burst in headed by the man she had been betrothed to in her cradle, Duke Ivan. He would ride his horse straight into the Pump Room and bend down and lift her up beside him and they would ride off, scattering invalids to right and left. ‘And a very thoughtless and cruel thing that would be, too,’ said the voice of Maria’s conscience, but the hurting side of Maria who lived on dreams shouted back, ‘Shut up,’ and went on to embroider the dream that might keep reality at bay for a little longer.

It was a gloomy morning for Amy Tribble. She rose early. She heard Maria moving about her room and went to talk to her, but Maria had a dreamy look in her eyes and barely seemed to hear her. ‘My wretched tongue,’ thought Amy miserably. Her back ached and she could feel one of those dreadful waves of heat beginning to engulf her body. She wanted to hug Maria and beg her forgiveness, but whatever dream encased Maria kept Amy at bay.