Mr Bishop and the Actress (4 page)

‘But Sophie – you must help her move her bed, Bishop. She’s a good-hearted girl.’

‘Very well. You won’t be bothered by Mrs Wallace again.’ I take his arm.

His lip quivers. ‘But I should
like
to be bothered by her.’

I bite back a sharp retort.

After I see Charles Fordham safely stowed in his hackney carriage I make haste to solve the problem of the bothersome Mrs Wallace and her bed.

Harry

I
find Mrs Wallace sitting on a large, neatly folded pile of pillows, sheets and feather bed, the bed stripped to its mattress.

‘I have arranged storage for your bed and temporary accommodation for you, Mrs Wallace, at Mr Fordham’s request. A driver and a cart will arrive shortly.’

‘That’s very good of you, sir.’ She proceeds to remove the mattress that lay beneath the feather bed and I move forward to help her. ‘May I ask where?’

‘At Bishop’s Hotel.’

‘Bishop’s Hotel? Your family owns it?’

‘They do, ma’am.’

She looks at me with a satirical smile. ‘Oh, I know what you think. I assure you, I can be discreet. How very pleasant that you can visit your family!’

I’m annoyed that my misgivings show on my face and am then surprised when she says with apparent sincerity, ‘Oh, I beg your pardon.’

She unloops the rope that was the support of the mattress and coils it neatly. ‘Is the man with the cart strong?’

I bristle with offended male pride. ‘I assure you I am quite strong enough to deal with dismantling your bed, Mrs Wallace.’

‘Oh, certainly.’ She strolls over to the window and props herself against the window ledge. ‘Pray proceed. The steps double as storage. You will find a mallet and a wedge there. There is not a single steel bolt or screw in the whole piece except for the curtain rails. It’s very well made.’

I walk around the bed silently cursing myself for my arrogance. I am not sure that even the brawn of my brother-in-law Thomas Shilling, a huge ex-pugilist of some twenty stone of muscle, or even two of him, if they existed, could dismantle this monstrosity of fornication. I shall be like the minnow that swims alongside a whale. Grimly I unbutton my coat.

How many other men have unbuttoned their coats (and more) in the presence of Mrs Wallace and her bed?

I am spared further disturbing thoughts by the arrival of Thomas and his son Richard, a skinny beanpole of a fellow who is much the same size and dimensions as one of the bedposts. Richard stares entranced at Mrs Wallace who rewards him with a dazzling smile.

‘Come along, lad,’ Tom says to him. ‘Look sharp, now. Harry, they’re doing the fattened calf and all for you at the hotel; Mrs Bishop is airing the sheets for you and has the kitchen all in a tizzy. They’re that excited to see you. Now, this bed. Well, now.’

He steps around it as though facing an opponent in the ring.

‘Tester off first, Father, I reckon,’ Richard says.

‘One moment, gentlemen.’ Mrs Wallace trips forward, beaming. ‘If I may.’ She runs up the steps again and stands on the frame of the bed, holding on to a post and reaching on to the tester. ‘I had to take the precaution – if you would not mind catching these as I throw them down—’

Good God, she tosses down a half dozen bonnets, three gowns, a couple of shawls, and handfuls of stockings.

‘They took some things I owned,’ she explains, ‘so I was careful to conceal the rest. Pray be careful with the flowers on that bonnet, Mr Bishop.’

‘What shall we do with these, then, Uncle Harry?’ Richard asks.

‘Take them off!’ I snap at him, for he sports a bonnet on his head, stockings festooned around his shoulders, and a silly grin on his face.

‘We’ll wrap the clothes in the curtains and I shall carry the bonnets,’ Mrs Wallace says. She looks down on us, laughing, standing on one foot like a tightrope dancer, and for a moment I smile back at her, as charming and pretty as she is.

But it’s Tom who lumbers forward and offers his hand to her and she descends as gracefully as a queen while I feel like a fool, although I cannot say exactly why.

So the work begins in earnest. The tester, that amounts to a large painting in a wooden frame, sits atop a railing that runs around the bed, set on top of the bedposts. We lower it with some difficulty, for it is a large and unwieldy piece, and set it against the wall. Tom unfastens the rail that holds the curtains and Richard and I dart forward to become entangled with yards of brocade, from which we emerge sneezing, and which we fold under Mrs Wallace’s guidance.

Thomas sets to work with the mallet and wedge, and Mrs Wallace runs to catch the wooden bolts in one of her bonnets. Richard and I meanwhile steady the solid pieces of wood as they loosen and sway and carry them to the side. Mrs Wallace chats to Thomas about his grandchildren and makes Richard blush by asking him if he has a sweetheart. Me she ignores, and I am not sure whether I’m thankful or resentful, but eventually the bed is reduced to a pile of lumber and brocade.

We take the first load downstairs to the cart and discover another impediment. Thomas has promised sixpence to a boy to hold the horse’s head, and a small crowd of ne’er-do-wells and loungers has collected. The boy, a child of about six who attends his task with great pride, may prove inadequate to guarding the contents of the cart.

I suggest Richard stays and that I assist in carrying.

‘Indeed no,’ Thomas says. ‘It’s not right for a gentleman and carrying is what Richard is paid to do.’

‘Oh, indeed!’ Mrs Wallace pats a blushing Richard on the arm. ‘You’d never think he was so strong!’

And so I find myself the guardian of the cart and subjected to loud and vulgar comments on my parentage and my private activities by the onlookers.

‘Ignore them, Mr Bishop,’ Mrs Wallace murmurs as she leaves with Thomas and Richard. ‘They mean no harm.’

I am not convinced, although I suspect that the insults and crude comments are self-perpetuating, less to do with my appearance (employed, respectable) than with the desire to outdo each other in fantastic flights of the imagination. Indeed, I am quite impressed with the breadth and rich detail of the onlookers’ speculations. I also notice that, for the most part, they fall silent and remove their hats when Mrs Wallace appears, only to renew their efforts with the greatest of vigour, as though refreshed by their silence, when she goes back into the house.

‘Do I still get my sixpence, sir?’ the child asks, as though the insults are part of his job and he resents a new recipient.

I assure him he does, and after several trips the bed is loaded and we are ready to depart. Before I think of doing so, Thomas offers his hand to Mrs Wallace, who alights gracefully on to the seat of the cart. Richard and I take our seats on the cart tail, our legs dangling. As we leave for Bishop’s Hotel I raise my hat to the crowd, who respond with some huzzahs mixed in with the insults.

Sophie

So this Mr Bishop is connected with Bishop’s Hotel! I am quite astonished, but then not so much. For all he looks like a gentleman, there are certain indications – his accent, the ill-fitting coat – that mark him as a servant, and of course my neighbours knew him for what he was immediately. An educated and gentlemanly servant, it is true, but someone who has ascended the slippery slope of social advancement on his own talent and wits. No wonder he is so nervous around me. He does not want to be associated with a woman of ill repute.

I have become great friends with Mr Shilling while Mr Bishop glowers and I flirted a little with Richard to make him glower more; but it was so easy I lost interest. I am intrigued to find out why Mr Bishop is so unwilling to visit his family, and I am to find out soon enough.

I have never stayed at Bishop’s Hotel for it is not the sort of place that Charlie and his friends and family would patronize, since it is neither fashionable, smart, nor conveniently located for the fashionable centre of London. Rather, it is a small, ramshackle, frowsty sort of place, frequented by shifty gentlemen awaiting the arrival of a banker’s draft, salesmen selling noxious drafts and potions, and widows of dubious reputation; and although I am one of the latter myself I am fashionable, and would turn up my nose at the accommodation at Bishop’s. Or at least in former times I would have done so. Now, my circumstances are changed.

We drive into the courtyard, where a carriage disgorges its occupants and ostlers unharness the horses. All is bustle and efficiency.

A smiling gentleman, prosperous in appearance with a fat gold watch chain, consults his watch, and hooks his thumbs into his waistcoat as the passengers step out and stretch and shake out travel-creased greatcoats or skirts. He greets a few, shaking some by the hand, and I notice he does so as an equal. He is an older version of Mr Harry Bishop, but more genial and more at ease in the world. A waiter holds a door open, bowing, to admit the passengers into the hotel.

But then a woman, dark-skinned and all brilliance and colour in a sapphire-blue gown and rich cashmere shawl, runs to the foot of our cart.

‘Harry! Lord, you should have given us more notice. Come here, then.’

To my great amusement she grabs Bishop and bestows a smacking kiss on him. He squirms away like a small boy. ‘Ma’am! Not in front of everyone.’

How delightful to see Mr Bishop reduced to normal humanity! But she advances on me as Mr Shilling helps me down from the cart. ‘Mrs Wallace, welcome to Bishop’s Hotel.’

I curtsy and murmur a greeting.

Mrs Bishop sums me up in a glance. She knows who I am, she knows the value of my gown and bonnet, and quite likely she knows Charlie has cast me off. She is friendly but cautious and her shrewd gaze implies that she does not altogether trust me.

She turns her attention to the contents of the cart. ‘A bed! Why, what a monstrous great old thing. Tom and Richard, if I may impose upon you to set it up for the lady—’

I am about to say it’s not necessary, but her son starts to say something of the sort and I am compelled to disagree, and instead express my thanks at her kindness.

‘You and I shall drink tea, Mrs Wallace,’ Mrs Bishop says, and leads me inside the inn, along a passage and some twists and turns, up a few steps, around a corner, down a few steps, and into a comfortable parlour. From the sewing discarded on the sofa and a newspaper tossed on to the table, I guess it must be the private quarters of the Bishop family.

Mrs Bishop summons a maid to bring cups and saucers but makes tea herself from a kettle on the hearth and a tea caddy on the mantelpiece. When the maid has come and gone, and tea is poured, she sits back with a sigh, a busy woman enjoying the chance to sit and gossip for a while.

But Mrs Bishop does not gossip. She comes straight to the point. ‘I know who you are, Mrs Wallace. I have something of a fondness for scandal magazines. I can’t say I’m altogether comfortable with you under my roof but Harry insisted.’

‘You need not worry, ma’am. This is a temporary measure only while I seek other employment.’ She raises her eyebrows and I continue, ‘I shall return to my father’s theatre company.’

She chuckles. ‘Very well. I beg only that you won’t break my son’s heart.’

Break Mr Bishop’s heart? I’m not sure that loyal factotum has one. ‘His heart is safe from me,’ I say. Besides, simply put, the gentleman cannot afford me.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t notice the way he looks at you,’ she says. ‘More tea, Mrs Wallace?’

‘I assure you you’re mistaken, Mrs Bishop.’

She shakes her head. ‘I know my son. But I daresay your paths won’t cross again. Ah, here’s Mr Bishop.’

Sure enough, the senior Mr Bishop enters the room and bows to me and gives his wife a hearty kiss. ‘Mrs Wallace, eh? Mrs Bishop’s a great follower of yours. She went searching all over for trimmings for a bonnet like yours after she read about it in the paper.’

Mrs Wallace frowns but pours him a cup of tea. ‘I am interested in fashion, my dear. Any woman is.’

‘I’ve persuaded Harry to stay the night,’ his father says. He pours his tea into his saucer and blows on it to cool it.

The parlour door opens. ‘Harry, my dear, we were just saying you looked tired. And thin, too. Are you eating enough?’

Harry enters the parlour and looks surprised to see me there. ‘Of course I am, ma’am.’

‘We’ll make sure you have a good dinner,’ his mother cries. ‘We’ll have raisin pudding – it was his favourite when he was a child, Mrs Wallace. He would take all the raisins out and line them at the edge of the plate so he could save them for last because he liked them so much.’

‘I managed to break myself of that habit a few years ago,’ Harry says and at first I think he’s absolutely serious. But no, astonishingly enough there’s a glint of humour.

Mrs Bishop, however, is undeterred. She has me, a captive audience, and despite warning me off her son, she cannot resist the opportunity to boast about him. ‘Fetch the pencil drawing, Harry, my dear.’ She turns to me. ‘We had an artist staying with us when Harry was a little scrap of a thing, and he was good enough to do some drawings of the children.’

‘In lieu of paying his bill properly,’ says Mr Bishop senior, bending to light a clay pipe at the fire.

‘He will never let me forget!’ cries Mrs Bishop. ‘Over twenty years ago and still he complains. But I would not part with this picture for the world.’

Harry hands me a framed picture. It is a charming pencil sketch of a litter of children, for such is how they appear, all tumbled together, a mass of round cheeks and curls and mischievous eyes.

‘I have never seen a lovelier infant than my Harry,’ his doting mother says.

Harry rolls his eyes.

‘What lovely children. Which one is he, ma’am?’

‘Oh, it is as plain as the nose on your face!’ Mrs Bishop leans over my shoulder and taps a finger on the glass. ‘This one!’

‘Why, so it is.’ With the excessive lengths of curling hair and the dress I thought the child a girl. ‘And the others, ma’am? What of them?’

Mrs Bishop is only too happy to regale me with tales of Harry’s brother and sisters, although I am overwhelmed by the flood of anecdotes and praise. I learn there is a brother at sea, a sister who is a housekeeper, another who married a chandler in Bristol, and the sister who is married to Mr Shilling the carrier and the mother of young Richard and three others.