The New Countess (9 page)

The staff were tired of shuttling between Dilberne Court and Belgrave Square as her Ladyship changed her mind about which staff she needed this end or that. They seemed to be forever packing and unpacking. It was now more peaceful at Belgrave Square than at Dilberne Court. Who could have imagined it? Even the staff bedrooms were being ‘seen to’ and central heating put in, which made the servants complain about feeling stuffy and unhealthy. The sound of hammering and the smell of paint offended everyone. Lady Minnie worried that there was lead in the paint, which of course there was, but it had never been shown to do any child any harm. Lady Minnie was full of worries. Lily said it was because Lord Arthur didn’t pay her enough attention.

‘Those who change the sheets know the truth: old country saying,’ said Lily over a cup of tea and a Huntley and Palmer ginger-nut. Chocolate biscuits were for upstairs.

‘You made that up,’ said Mary. ‘I’ve never heard it.’ She came from London too, and was still talking of the way she’d had to clear up Pappagallo’s mess from the steps, which was surely an outdoor man’s job. She was a plain girl with a double chin and pimples, who flourished on resentment, and whose sulky look had somehow taken root in her appearance, and who, as Reginald remarked, was not likely to attract his Lordship’s attention – Lordship the father or Lordship the son, come to that, if what Lily said was true.

‘I don’t tell lies,’ said Lily.

‘Ho, ho, ho,’ said Reginald. He was fed up with Lily. She was saucy but never came through.

This evening Cook was serving a supper for the staff of boiled salmon, very cheap in August, neck of mutton stew with dumplings and bread and butter pudding. Nanny had got in her way sieving green beans for the children and blanching cucumbers for salad, according to Lady Minnie’s instructions, so Cook was running late and not in a good mood. The Earl was at the House as usual – there was so much trouble in the world he spent more and more of his time in London – so the Countess could have her way with the menus while at Dilberne.

Today her Ladyship had demanded
côtelettes d’agneau à la Constance
for dinner, trying out a menu which came from Mrs Keppel’s cook. It was little better, Cook thought, than lamb in a white sauce but flavoured with sliced cockscombs, which in Cook’s opinion meant no proper flavour at all, like the truffles Lady Isobel was so suddenly keen on. The Earl would have turned up his nose at it, he being a roast beef and Yorkshire pudding kind of man, but in his absence her Ladyship liked to experiment.

The recipe came via Lily, whose habit it was to meet Mrs Keppel’s lady’s maid Agnes in St James’s Park on her day off every second Sunday. Agnes (or so she claimed) could wind Mrs Keppel’s chef, the famous Monsieur Delachaume, round her little finger, and so was able to pass on to Lily – in exchange for a small fee, paid for by her Ladyship, and in an extra half-day off when Lily was in London – recipes for exotic dishes served in the Keppel household at No. 30 Portman Square.

‘Tell you what, Lily,’ Cook said, ‘do me a favour and taste those foreign recipes before you pass them on. Don’t give me any more cockscombs. Nasty flabby things, you have to soak them in hot water and then rub the red skin between finger and thumb.’

‘In other words,’ said Reginald, ‘you’re a decent Englishwoman, not a dirty French trollop.’

Cook was taken aback but all others round the table laughed, except Mary, who took offence and made no attempt to hide it.

‘That’s enough of that, Reginald,’ said Mr Neville, the butler.

‘There’ll be no lewd talk around this table,’ said Mrs Neville, the housekeeper.

‘Surprised you know what I’m talking about,’ said Reginald.

‘You’re getting too big for your boots, Reginald,’ said Mr Neville. ‘One day you’ll go too far.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Reginald, ‘I know where too many bodies are buried. Isn’t that so, Lily? And you just be thankful, Mary,’ said Reginald, ‘that Lady Rosina didn’t turn up here with her parrot. Forget inside outside, you’d have been scrubbing off its shit all day and night too. She’d work all night, in the East Wing, in the gazebo, in the library, wherever and whenever the fancy took her.’

‘
All places were alike to her, oh-my-best-beloved
,’ said Lily, ‘as Rudyard Kipling says.’

‘And no showing off knowledge others don’t have, Lily,’ said Mrs Neville, ‘no matter however many half-days off you now have. It causes embarrassment and distress.’

‘Strange how Lady Rosina vanished off into the blue like that,’ said Mr Neville the butler, ‘and never even been down to see her own brother. Let alone Lady Minnie, with whom she used to be so thick. But that was before your time, Mary.’

‘She didn’t “vanish into the blue like that”,’ said Reginald. ‘She went to stay at No. 3 Fleet Street. I know that from the cab driver she hired in the street. I caught up with him in a cabbie shelter the other day. And guess who lives at No. 3 Fleet Street?’

‘You never told me that,’ complained Lily. ‘Well, who?’

‘Mr Anthony Robin, that’s who.’

‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’ asked Mr Neville.

‘Oh no!’ said Mrs Neville. ‘Anthony Robin? Isn’t he the one—’

‘Lord Ashenwold’s younger son,’ said Reginald. ‘What a memory you have, Mrs W! That’s right, the one who owned the flat in Half Moon Street. The flat where I’d take Master Arthur to see his fancy girl Flora, just before he got wed. Flora being the one her Ladyship got so upset about. Not that I suppose Lady Rosina knows about that, or cares for that matter – she and her Ladyship not being on the best of terms. Lady Rosina would have done better to stay in the land of the cannibals.’

‘Science tells us, Reginald,’ said Mr Neville, ‘that there is no culture on Earth which practises cannibalism. It is against God and nature.’

‘So’s a lot of things I could mention,’ said Reginald darkly, ‘that go against both and still happen. Mr Anthony Robin and Master Arthur for instance.’

‘That’s enough,’ said Mr Neville sharply. ‘There are ladies present.’

‘Some of them are more ladies than others,’ said Reginald, ‘or less.’ But he shut up. Lily too knew where bodies were buried. He couldn’t go too far.

‘The macadamia nuts I used to have to get in for that bird,’ said Mrs Neville. ‘Husks everywhere and clouds of little flies.’

‘Mrs Beeton has a recipe for parrot pie,’ said Cook, meditatively. ‘A dozen parakeets, a few slices of beef and lemon peel. Hard-boiled eggs too, as I remember. I’d take comfort from it, just planning the plucking.’

Cook asked if the table preferred egg custard to Bird’s custard on the bread and butter pudding, but everyone said no, they liked the bright yellow of the Bird’s; while some suggested that Cook could make it a little more thinly so it soaked into the bread better. Cook’s good humour was restored.

‘So are we to take it,’ asked Mrs Neville, returning to the subject in point, ‘that within days of getting back from the land of the kangaroos, our Lady Rosina is living with a single man in Fleet Street?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Reginald cautiously. ‘We should not jump to conclusions. Mr Robin lives with his sister Diana as chaperone.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Mrs Neville, ‘our Miss Rosina was always a one for a quick decision. Within a couple of weeks of meeting her cousin’s fiancé she’d married him by special licence and was honeymooning on a ship to Fremantle. And then quick as a wink she lost him to a snake in Australia. More people go into that land than ever come out of it. Not a year later she was back with a book about the nasty habits of the natives of the land of the kangaroo. She had no shame the way she talked, Mary said. Oh yes, quick, very quick.’

‘Mary only heard part of the conversation,’ said Mr Neville judiciously. He scraped the pudding bowl around the edges where the crust had caramelized in the oven. Such was a butler’s privilege.

‘I heard what I heard. If Lily said it you wouldn’t doubt her,’ complained Mary.

‘Because I only speak the truth,’ said Lily, with a little smile and a lick of pretty pink tongue around delicate curved lips, making it clear that she was lying.

‘You have a hard heart and a wicked tongue, Lily,’ Mary burst out. ‘Poor Miss Rosina began to cry so I left the room. I felt quite sorry for her.’

‘More fool you,’ said Lily. She and Mary did not get on.

‘Don’t waste your pity,’ said Elsie the head parlourmaid. ‘Always complaining her bath water wasn’t hot and making me fetch more, though the East Wing was miles from the kitchens. Of course when she ran off and Princess Adela moved in, the running hot water came soon enough. Her Ladyship soon saw to it.’

‘Always asking impertinent questions, that Lady Rosina,’ said Peter, one of the outside men, who lived in one of the cottages, had bad arthritis and had recently been widowed. Mr Neville was sorry for him so he sometimes came in for supper with the servants. ‘How much we got paid and what we got up to in bed. No end to it.’

‘Did you tell her?’ asked Lily.

‘I told her a load of old apple sauce,’ said Peter, ‘we all did so. But she wrote it down just the same.’

‘It was Lady Rosina told Lady Minnie what Master Arthur was up to,’ said Lily. ‘I was there when it happened. She was the bringer of bad news, but Lady Minnie forgave her, more fool her, and Master Arthur too, come to that. And now all Master Arthur has eyes for is his beloved Jehu. But why should Lady Minnie care? She has the two boys; she can do what she wants.’

‘Miss this and Master that,’ said Mr Neville. ‘All very well for the older staff who brought them up from when they were little, and not a title to their name, but a young thing like you, Lily, should show them proper respect. Lady Rosina, Lady Minnie and his Lordship if you please.’

‘Respect is owed when respect is due,’ said Lily. ‘Old country saying. I’ll say no more than that.’

Minnie Goes to Church, but Arthur Does Not Come with Her

20th August 1905, Dilberne

‘Today,’ said Mr Stacey the vicar, ‘I want you to think about the words of John Newton’s wonderful hymn:

Approach, my soul, the mercy seat

Where Jesus answers prayer,

There humbly fall before his feet,

For none can perish there.

‘John Newton, once a trader in slaves, had himself plumbed the depths of sin, and had known the dark cloud of sorrow which accompanies sin. In Leviticus Chapter 16, we learn of the scapegoat upon whom the lot falls to go into the wilderness, carrying the sins of mankind with him…’

The Mercy Seat. Minnie hadn’t heard it mentioned since the days when she was a Catholic and lived in Chicago – the golden covering of the Ark of the Covenant where God was meant to rest. Now here it was again in this little stone church in England, built a thousand years ago – or part of it anyway, Arthur said, though about exactly which part of it he was rather vague. The Reverend Stacey was giving the sermon: Minnie liked him: he was young and eager, though some said he was too High Church for their liking and that he would have introduced a censer and incense had Isobel not put her foot down. Such were the dramas of Dilberne.

‘Dear God,’ Minnie prayed to herself, ‘thank You for all You have done for me, but please help me now.’ She realized she was miserable. She knelt in her usual pew this bright Sunday morning, second row of the three gated pews on either side of the aisle nearest to the altar, a small son, future Viscount and Earl, kneeling by her side, the Lord and Lady of the manor according to tradition in their allotted pew in front; she was sorry for herself. It was an unusual feeling for her and she did not like it one bit.

Time for the hymn. That should cheer her up. No. 442 in
Hymns Ancient and Modern
, Sir Arthur Sullivan’s splendid march.
‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’. Her father-in-law sang lustily in front:

Hell’s foundations quiver

At the shout of praise;

Brothers, lift your voices,

Loud your anthems raise –

The Countess too lifted hers, in a light, delicate, perfect voice. But Minnie’s own had a sudden quaver in it. She missed her mother. She missed her home town, its grandeurs and eccentricities. She missed the constant rattle of cattle trucks, the squealing of piglets, the grunting of hogs. Here the nights were so quiet and black. She didn’t miss the stench of the stockyards when the wind was from the west, as it so often was – even after they’d moved out to Jackson Park you’d get a whiff of hog every now and then.

What was the matter with her? Surely, she had everything a woman wanted – wealth, security, a place in society, two healthy male children, a husband who was rapidly becoming successful enough in the automobile industry to be mentioned in the business pages of
The Times
from time to time. It wasn’t just that she was bored, she was actively unhappy, enough to call upon the Lord to come to her aid. The prayer had come to her lips almost before the realization of her need.

What she needed was Arthur by her other side, flanking her in the pew, and he was not there. He had been too busy to come to church. Isobel had raised her eyebrows. The Earl had made light of it… Arthur had two of his new Jehus entered in the Isle of Man touring race in September: a fifty-five-mile circuit, fuel allowance one gallon for every twenty-two and a half miles – this competition being more about low fuel consumption than speed – and adjustments to the motor house and gear fittings had to be urgently made. Every change of gear meant fuel wasted. He would be in church in spirit, he said, just not in the flesh.

‘God will forgive him,’ the Earl had said. ‘A man has to do what a man has to do.’

‘A man has a duty to his family,’ said the Countess. ‘Let us just hope our Minnie forgives him.’

It was good of her mother-in-law to be so concerned, but it was a humiliation to be so closely observed.

We are not divided, all one body we,