Lady Susan Plays the Game (21 page)

She tried to raise the matter with her husband as they lay quietly together one night, but he laughed off her fears. ‘My dear,' he replied, ‘before Reginald arrived you were afraid he would be too disapproving of us, now you fear he will be too approving of our guest. Accept it that Lady Susan is a charming woman and that we cannot know the truth of her past. She has come to us as my brother's widow and that is the only character that concerns us.' And with that he turned to his side of the bed.

She was surprised at his tone. Charles was usually so meek. She didn't pursue the point – his back made it impossible. But when he was asleep and snoring, she lay awake a little longer than usual. She felt more alone in the house with all her dear family around her than she could ever remember feeling before.

Christmas came and went at Wigmore Street. The other girls had left for home or friends' houses in a confusion of excited talk about new gowns and fresh-trimmed bonnets, fashionable muslins and brocades, elder brothers with their smirking school friends or red-coated militia officers stationed nearby. Frederica imagined halls of holly, tressels and trays, pies and sweets, large coal fires even in bedrooms, singing and families huddling cosily together round burning logs.

But she'd been left at Madam Dacre's with only Fanny, a girl of ten, for company. Anna Leigh would have asked her parents if she could come to stay had Frederica been more encouraging. But Frederica had found it difficult to respond to Anna Leigh in the way she wanted. So no invitation had come and the parting had included the words: ‘Well, you'll have the whole bed to yourself now, Frederica, without me pushing you out of the middle.' And, with a laugh and a wave, Anna went off in a noisy flurry with a stern man who, Frederica supposed, was her father.

She was indeed glad to have the bed alone. She'd not quite liked the touch of the chubby girl or the loud breathing so close to her ear.

What Frederica didn't know was that, had the invitation come from Mrs Leigh, she couldn't have accepted it. ‘Madam Dacre,' Lady Susan had written, ‘I am unable at present to have my daughter with me and I would prefer it if she did not visit anyone not personally known to me. I am sure that she will be well provided for in your establishment.'

The headmistress was happy to oblige. She'd no intention of putting herself out for the girls left behind but she would charge the usual fee, with a little extra, for her presumed trouble of keeping them through a winter vacation; so she was not unsatisfied with the arrangement. Thus Frederica found herself relieved for a short time from the need of walking with a ruler down her back, articulating her vowels or pointing her toes in a fashionable manner.

Anna Leigh had long been aware that her bedfellow was reading her books and, with the innate tact of an outgoing girl, said nothing. However, the day before she left, feeling in expansive mood, she'd told Frederica she could read her novels as long as she didn't turn down the pages and was sure to put them back in the order she found them. She herself was not a circulating library, she said and laughed at her own wit.

Frederica grieved for her father and continued to comfort herself with Cowper's verses. Yet, there were not so many girls in this poetry as she wished, not so many that told her how she, Frederica Vernon, should live her life. Sometimes days went by without her opening her poetry at all. Her many hours spent alone were now primarily filled with novels.

She soon finished Mrs Gunning's
Memoirs of Charlotte
with its shocking picture of an unkind guardian. She commiserated with the sad heroine, but tried not to make too many comparisons for the other characters. Her mother was becoming a troubling presence. She placed these volumes back in Anna Leigh's cupboard with relief.

As the days past she read with greater and greater speed and with increased hunger. Other girls too had failed to take their books back to the circulating libraries and had left them in their cupboards, there seemed no reason not to avail herself of these. She was always careful. She'd no real wish to hide from her fellow pupils that she read their books but she was so grateful for the pleasure they gave that she didn't want to cause damage or leave traces of herself.

During this winter break, her main source was Eustacia Clarke. Initially Frederica had worried about reading her books; she was afraid of this girl who was loud and outspoken and often pushed Frederica to the banister when they were both walking downstairs. But it was silly to fear, for Eustacia was gone to her brother in Croydon and could not be back for many weeks.

So she read on:
Emmeline
and
Celestina
and
Sophia
and
Serulina.
Sometimes she read the same novel more than once. She didn't judge the books or compare them. She didn't consider them either real or all make-believe. But she did find herself responding to the repeated emotions, the dawning love, the passionate yearning of the hero for the heroine, the heroine for the hero. The immediate love, the absolute hate. The happy-ever-after of a country mansion and little children. She was as interested in botany as ever, but also now in
something to the side of what had always fascinated her. When she looked at the winter blooms that Madam Dacre always ordered the housekeeper to place in the library in case a prospective parent called, she felt that she had never before noticed how beautiful, how silky soft were the petals, though they could not have been as gorgeous as the summer flowers at home. Yet everything was somehow brilliant, not more than Someyton – that was still all golden – but perhaps more colourful. The days were often dim and foggy outside the window but, when she read her books, sometimes her mind felt transported into a clearer, more dazzling world which enveloped quite ordinary things around her. Despite the dreariness of her surroundings and her life, she was feeling a new energy. Was her grief turning into something strange, almost sensuous? She yearned for her father, she knew she did, but she felt too a craving for – she didn't quite know what.

Frederica had been anxious that Madam Dacre would come upon her and chastise her for borrowing books that didn't belong to her and for reading what was so disapproved of in the school. But after a while she saw that the headmistress had very little interest in what she did. That lady and the under-teachers who had remained in London tended to drink rather more of the cherry and port wine than usual at this time of year: some kind parents had seen fit to deliver to them several bottles in gratitude for keeping their unruly girls out of their way and making them marriageable, as their homes had failed to do. Madam Dacre and her staff showed their gratitude by enjoying the gifts.

In any case, Frederica was beginning to wonder whether the headmistress really disapproved of novels. She inspected the girls' cupboards from time to time, so how had she avoided seeing the works of the Miss Minifies, Miss Kelly, Miss Burney, Mrs Radcliffe and all the rest? Then Frederica remembered that Madam Dacre simply scrutinised the top shelves and looked into the first drawer of the cupboard where they kept their Bible and Prayer Book. Did she know better than to search further down? Before she'd become a reader of novels, Frederica would never have entertained such a thought.

In fact, Madam Dacre knew full well that many of her charges were addicted to fiction. It did little harm for it showed pretty girls getting lovers, titles and property – the last two being exactly what parents wanted for their real daughters. If some girls became dreamy with
longing, others were saved from more subversive thoughts by the fantasy of a bit of love in the inevitable marriage. None were the worse for their furtive reading.

In the beginning, Frederica had attended mainly to the heroines and compared their cases to her own – though she never identified entirely with these lovely and accomplished young girls – who looked, but never sounded, rather like her mother. But, as she read on, she did find that her interest centred more and more in the hero. She began to give him flesh – he had a warm smile and perhaps pale hair, she even once felt a touch. Thinking of him made her feel a sort of lazy softening that was just a little uncomfortable. Once she had wondered if she were ill, but the feeling had gone off, so nothing was very wrong.

She especially loved the scenes of disclosure, when the hero sprang forward, threw his arms round this beloved, pressed her to his bosom, and exclaimed, ‘Dearest beloved Emily/ Sophie/ Julia, will you accept the hand, the heart, the soul of your Ormond/ Delborough/ Orville/ St Clair?' Usually several exclamation marks followed the outburst. Frederica was beginning to think these a little absurd but she responded to the emotion every time.

She had never seen a young man like any described in the novels. She'd once been to a party at the Kimberleys with Jane Gurney and Elizabeth Hobart and had to stay the night with the Hobarts. The older girls had talked incessantly of their sweethearts. In the evening she'd met them. They were ordinary, with spots on their faces. One had lank ginger hair and talked of sports and hounds; the other was sullen, though Jane Gurney tried hard to bring him out. Frederica supposed her friends saw their young men quite differently from the way she did. But the heroes in the novels were another breed: gentle, noble, refined and self-composed. Nobody except her dear papa came close to them.

Then, of course, there was Sir James. As it happened, there was a villain called Sir James in the novel by Mrs Gunning she was just then reading. For a moment she thought it must be a reference to the horrid man she knew – until common sense returned. Yet when she closed the volume she went on thinking.

It was clearer now than it had been before exactly what ‘Sir James' signified. She still didn't understand the whys of violent male passion, but she knew it was threatening; the heroine had to escape it at all cost. The Emilys and Clarindas and Evelinas were carried
across the stormy countryside to avoid the villain's power, or they scurried down London alleyways while he pursued them with his deceit. Although she'd tried sometimes to see things through her mother's eyes, she had instinctively known she should repulse her ‘Sir James'. Now the very name on the page told her she'd been right. Mothers and daughters were not always on the same side – unless the mothers were dead. She felt a pang of guilt towards her beloved father for thinking these thoughts. And yet, however she fought against them, they would come.

When he'd pushed her against the stable wall at Langford she'd found Sir James absurd but even then she'd sensed a danger. She shuddered to think of the harm he could have done her had Mr Manwaring not chanced by. She could almost feel the fleshy face and slobbering lips. It was the Lincolnshire curlycoat pig grown fierce and human.

Even Mrs Johnson seemed to have left town for Christmas. In any case, Frederica could not have been invited back to Edward Street now Mr Johnson was with his wife most of the time; from the few remarks she'd laughingly let slip, he seemed a positive ogre. As Mrs Manwaring's guardian Mr Johnson had been horrid over her marriage to Mr Manwaring: he must be very disagreeable. But husband and wife were not always together, and so why had Mrs Johnson not taken her out on a pleasure trip or to the theatre, as she had as good as promised Frederica when she visited? The weeks had gone by with not even a message. Had she failed to please yet again?

She was by no means sure she wanted to be with Lady Susan, but she did wish she'd been invited to Churchill. She didn't know her uncle or aunt Vernon, and her mother had spoken slightingly of the latter. But her papa had mentioned his brother with affection. And she'd heard there were little children. She loved little children.

The downy heads of babies always enchanted her. She delighted to hold their bodies, heavy and warm and wriggling in her arms, while they grasped her finger with their tiny chubby hands. She'd watched the little roly-poly infants in the village trying to walk on their rounded legs and heard them utter their first lisping words. One summer she'd taught little Lydia to read with big cut-out letters, and Lydia's mother, though she'd remarked to Mrs Baines in her hearing that Lydia would not have much call for letters with her pretty face, had
been grateful and said, ‘You are a kind girl, Miss Frederica', which had pleased her. But, although Churchill was not far from London, she'd not been called for any more than she had been to Edward Street. Tears welled up inside her.

‘What are you crying for, miss?' asked Fanny, walking into her dormitory. The school cat, supposedly kept to catch mice in the attic, was struggling in her grasp. The child held one arm tight round its middle while with the other she controlled the paws with which it was trying to scratch her.

‘I'm not really,' said Frederica, sniffing.

‘Yes you are.'

‘Well, aren't you lonely, Fanny?'

‘Got the cat,' replied Fanny and giggled.

Frederica gazed at her. ‘Don't you have parents?' she asked.

‘Dead,' the girl replied. ‘Only uncle and he don't want me.'

‘Oh don't say that,' cried Frederica. ‘I'm sure he loves you really.'

‘No he don't,' said Fanny. ‘I heard him say to his mistress “What shall we do with the brat?” and cook said that was me.'

Frederica was shocked. ‘She must be wrong and, besides, I'm sure your uncle wouldn't have a mistress.'

‘He does too,' said Fanny. ‘Cook says that's what she is though she gives herself airs.'

Just then the cat wriggled free, scratched Fanny's hand and jumped out of her arms. It scuttled out of the room and up the stairs. With a yelp, Fanny ran after it hallooing.

Frederica sat down on her bed. She was glad to have the room to herself and yet it was difficult not to feel just a little forlorn knowing the other girls had all, except Fanny, been taken to homes. She pulled out the miniature of her father and looked at it closely, as she did almost every day; he was already growing distant, as if his very image were fading. She struggled to bring it back into clear focus while she imagined the sound of his voice. Then she put the miniature away in its velvet covering and, looking over at Anna Leigh's side of the bed, caught sight of herself in Anna's glass. She usually tried to avoid looking at herself in a mirror. Mrs Baines had preached much against vanity, and she herself had added a natural diffidence that
made any contemplation of her reflection embarrassing. Besides, she had always thought of herself as nothing beside her mother; her father had been kind about her appearance, it was true, but he had kept his superlative praise for his wife.