Paying Guests (31 page)

‘I know,’ Eliza said with a flash of annoyance. ‘The likes of me
don’t think as deep as ladies and gentlemen do. Well, we don’t always have the opportunity. Life’s hard for our sort, so we look for the simplest ways to make it easier.’

‘Oh dear, I’ve offended you,’ Tilly said. ‘Forgive me! I meant only to – well, let it be. I want always that you should be content, Eliza. Are you? Are you happy, quite recovered from Mr Reagan?’

Eliza sat and stared over Tilly’s head for a while, her eyes glazed and then she focused on Tilly and let a smile lift her round cheeks.

‘Well, you could say, Mum, I got the best of the bargain. I had a bit o’ fun and though I liked it well enough, I don’t think it was worth gettin’ yourself all upset for. Certainly not worth having a great smelly man lumbering about in your bed for ever and a day. I had the bit of fun, like I say, and I won’t go to my grave not knowing, if you see what I mean, which would ha’ been a pity. I didn’t fancy dyin’ as a virgin, never did. But to go on with it all the time – no, I wouldn’t care for that. And he left me a bit of ‘imself –’ Again the belly pat. ‘And if God was a woman, Mum, why I dare say she’d ha’ arranged it always like that.’

This time they both laughed and felt better for it, and then as Eliza made a move to get to her feet, Tilly made a gesture and bade her sit down again.

‘What I actually wished to speak of was something quite different,’ she said. ‘Now – I – oh dear, I hope this is the right thing I’m doing.’ She pondered and Eliza watched her, the laughter fading from her eyes, and her face becoming serious again.

‘Don’t say nothing you don’t want to, Mum,’ she said. ‘But be assured that whatever you says to me stays with me. No one else knows anything – or ever will. Sealed like the grave an’ all that.’

‘Yes,’ Tilly said consideringly and then gave a decisive little nod. ‘Very well. When are Duff and Sophie going to Leicestershire?’

‘On Friday, Mum. They said next week, first go off, but Miss Sophie’s in such a lather of excitement it’s been agreed they go sooner. She wanted to take Rosie with her but I said she had to ask you.’

‘Take Rosie?’ Tilly stared. ‘Whatever for?’

‘She said as the great ladies’ll all have their own maids,’ Eliza said,
‘and she don’t want to look different. But I did say as we were very busy here and I didn’t think we could see our way clear to letting her go.’

‘And quite right too!’ Tilly said angrily. ‘Where does she get her notions? I shall have to speak to her after all –’ She shook her head. ‘I had hoped to avoid doing so but – oh dear Eliza, I’m in such a taking!’

Eliza looked alarmed. ‘Whatever is it, Mum?’

‘It’s Dorcas,’ Tilly almost snapped the name out. ‘Sophie’s Mamma. I have found out that she will be free in another month and –’

‘Free? How do you mean, free, Mum?’

‘Oh dear!’ Tilly looked at the amazement on Eliza’s face and shook her head once more. ‘I shall have to explain properly, shan’t I?’

And she did.

TILLY WALKED BRISKLY along Brompton Grove towards Charlie’s shop, her hands tucked into a muff for the first time this season, for it had become suddenly very cold indeed considering it was still but November, and her eyes were watering against the bite of the wind. She could have let Eliza make the journey, for she had offered and was as capable of leaving the order and paying the bills as Tilly herself, but Tilly had chosen to go. She needed the time to think, she told herself. And perhaps to call in at Jem’s shop to talk to him.

She had felt a slight stab of guilt as that thought came to her; she treated Jem so much as a convenience, calling on him for aid when she had need of it and hardly thinking of him otherwise; it was not kind when he loved her so dearly. And she wondered idly for a moment what life might have been like had she accepted Jem’s earnest proposals of marriage all those years ago, when Duff was still small and she had been so uncertain of life in her new venture at Quentin’s.

But even as the thought came to her, an image of Silas Geddes lifted before her mind’s eye, his face so concerned and his approval of her showing in the way he looked at her, and she felt even more ashamed. To be thinking so at her age and when there were so many other problems to concern her was quite ridiculous.

But for all that, she stopped at Jem’s shop, ostensibly to buy some linen to make new glass towels for the kitchen, and was quite cast down when the shopman told her that Mr Leland was away
from the premises at the moment and not expected back until much later in the day; and she bought her glass cloth stuff and carried the parcel away with her, declining to have it delivered in the usual manner and, now she knew she could not discuss matters with Jem, was forced to consider for herself whether she was right to take Eliza’s advice.

She had listened with great care to Eliza’s reactions to the news that Dorcas was likely to be free in a month or so. Eliza was a sensible woman who had, after all, known Dorcas as well as she had herself, or almost, and it had been Eliza’s considered opinion that she, Tilly, was worrying unnecessarily.

‘She won’t come round here sniffing and prying and bothering us,’ she said stoutly. ‘For why should she? She hasn’t bothered us these dunnamany years so why start now? Not when she left us a lady riding high on the hog’s back, and would have to come back skulking like the jailbird she is. It stands to reason – and anyway, why should she know Sophie’s here? Mark my words, Mum, Miss Sophie came here to you on account she wanted to escape from her mother altogether, and had to be away well before she come out of prison. She wants no part of her, not after what she done, and Miss Sophie so pretty and nice.’

‘A dancer?’ Tilly had ventured and Eliza had looked quite indignant.

‘What’s wrong with being a dancer and making people happy? I read about the theatre ladies all the time and they’re not so black as they’re painted. The poor girl had to make her living some road and why not down that one? If I’d ‘a’ had the looks and the power to do it, why Mum, I’d ha’ been proud and glad of it. And,’ she ended triumphantly, ‘she must be a lady for why else would a duke ask her to stay?’

Perhaps because she is a dancer and anything but a lady, Tilly found herself thinking but she did not say so aloud.

Eliza had got to her feet and brushed down her gown, ready to return to her kitchen. ‘Take my word for it, Mum, we don’t need to do nothin’,’ she said confidently. ‘That Madam Dorcas won’t come back here, no matter what. Say nothing, that’s my motto on this
one. Least said, soonest mended, and the less Miss Sophie in particular knows the better for her and for all of us.’

And although Tilly lacked Eliza’s high opinion of Sophie and her ladylike qualities, Tilly had to admit the strength of her argument. It was not logical to fear that Dorcas would suddenly appear like one of the genies in the operas Sophie danced in. If she, Tilly, had not gone to Clerkenwell to look for news of Polly’s father she would never have known about her imprisonment at all, nor have feared her reappearance at Quentin’s. There was clearly no need to do so now.

She had almost reached Charlie’s shop, when she passed a saddler’s with a fine window display of whips and leather boxes and harnesses, and she paused, her eye caught by a dressing case in green leather, well fitted with crystal bottles with silver stoppers and tortoiseshell-backed brushes. Duff, she thought, and after a moment went into the shop.

Why she did it she was not quite certain afterwards. It was not as simple as wanting to give her son a gift, just for the delight of doing so. She wanted to send him to Paton so well equipped that no one could fail to think highly of him, she decided; that was why she spent so much on so luxurious an item. She knew he had spent most of his allowance on hunting clothes to take with him, and that he carried his toiletries in a simple sponge bag; if he arrived at a ducal residence with so splendid a piece of equipment as this case, then he would show all of them just how elegant and well found a young man he was.

It is time, she told herself when she emerged from the saddler’s fifteen minutes later, having arranged for the case to be delivered to Quentin’s that afternoon, that we spoke about his future, Duff and I. I wanted him to have some peace and amusement in these first months after leaving school, but he cannot spend all his days riding and dancing attendance on –

She stopped then, and bit her lip. That was really what was distressing her, she knew. He spent too much time with Sophie, and whatever Eliza said and however much the other guests loved her, Tilly didn’t feel comfortable about her. But am I not being ridiculous?
she asked herself as slowly she began to walk towards Charlie’s shop once more. I fretted over his friendship with Patrick Paton, and wished him to make one with a young lady. And now he has, I dislike that too. Am I no more than a jealous mother, unwilling to let go of her only beloved child? Is that my trouble? If it is, then I must mend my ways, Duff will not tolerate my views if I am unjust to him and try too hard to prevent him from living the life of a young man.

It was a relief to walk in through the familiar entrance to Charlie’s shop, for it banished her thoughts and she stood, her hands still muffed, and looked about her as the cold air from outside was excluded by the shop boy who seemed to have the task of closing the door behind her, having opened it to welcome her.

Now she could see that much of the work that had been going on all throughout the last months was finished. The shop was larger than ever, and seemed to be extraordinarily full of staff and customers, and she smiled at the sight of the goods piled high in handsome arrangements on the broad mahogany counters and the way the shopmen were so carefully dressed and had such very snowy aprons tied round their neat waists.

A man in the same black as the other shopmen, but without an apron, came over to her in a posture that was only just short of obsequious. ‘Good day, Madam. Can I be of service to you?’

‘I was looking for Charlie,’ she said, looking at him with her brows raised. ‘Er – Mr Harrod, that is. I don’t believe I have seen you here before?’

‘No indeed, Madam.’ The man spoke rather carefully, his words clipped and nasal. ‘I have joined Mr ‘arrod – Mr Harrod – as his floor manager, so that he can be relieved of anxiety on those occasions when he is dealing with customers on our upper storey.’ He said it with great pride. ‘And of course Mr Harrod has to be very busy dealing with the builders as they extend our departments. Now, to which department may I direct you, Madam? Teas and coffees are all together over there, and here we have the sweet biscuits and chocolates and nuts and other such materials and over there –’

‘Mrs Q!’ a voice said and Tilly turned gratefully to where Charlie had appeared beside her. ‘I’ll look after this lady, Mr Lansdown. But make sure you know her next time, for she is one of our most valued customers, is Mrs Quentin. I take it you’re well?’ And he looked at Tilly with some anxiety. ‘I’ve seen Eliza here this past three or four weeks or more and though she tells me all’s well, I like to see for myself.’

‘I’m very well,’ Tilly said and Mr Lansdown bowed and took himself off to talk to another customer who had just come in. ‘I’m sorry not to have been in the shop for a while, but I have been very well. It does look remarkable. You seem to have something new every time I put my head around your door!’

‘Don’t I just!’ Charlie cried delightedly. ‘Come and look!’

She could not have argued with his insistence that he show her every part of his enlarged shop, even had she wanted to. He was so very determined that all she could do was walk along beside him as, with his bowler hat pushed to the back of his head and his shirtsleeved arms flailing (for although he insisted his shopmen were always dressed completely
comme il faut
his own daily uniform never varied; Tilly could not recall seeing him without his hat for a very long time now), he displayed his pride and joy.

And indeed it had developed very well since she had last come in. Parts of the shop that had then been shrouded in dust sheets were now proudly on display. There was the patent medicines counter (and very busy it was, she noted with a little amusement; Charlie had been right, as usual, in his shrewd estimation of a line of goods that would give him a handsome profit, even if it had been his nephew who had first suggested it) and the section labelled in large flowing and heavily decorated letters ‘Perfumery’ and the stationery department, well supplied with a bewildering range of writing papers and cards and pens and inks, looking wonderfully inviting. All these new departments were on the upper floor, and he led her up the stairs to them with such transparent satisfaction that she could have laughed aloud. But of course she didn’t, contenting herself with admiring murmurs and nods.

‘Now,’ she said, when at last he had exhausted his tour. ‘I really
must pay my bill and give you the new order. If you are too busy I will gladly deal with one of your men – you seem to have enough of them.’

‘Sixteen,’ he said proudly, ‘now I got Mr Lansdown. Ain’t he the goods? I like to give a bit o’ extra class to the place and he does that. Not that he don’t work for his wages, mind you. He can cut a ham as well as the next man and bag up sugar ‘n’ tea faster ‘n you can look at him and correct to a penny weight too. But he’s got a winning way with ‘im that the ladies like and I think he’s worth his money. I’m paying out fifteen pounds a week in wages now, you know!’ He grinned at her, again suffused with pride. ‘Delivery boys – two of ‘em – and someone to haul the stock about and all that, and a dozen shopmen in here – oh, just you watch me!’