Julian Fellowes's Belgravia Read online

  “You only encourage her to beg,” said James. But she didn’t really care.

  Their daughter-in-law, Susan, was complaining. This was so ordinary a state of affairs that it was hard to concentrate, and Anne had to force herself to listen to this evening’s litany of woe. The problem seemed to be that she had not been taken to the Duchess of Bedford’s tea party. “But you weren’t invited,” said Anne, reasonably enough.

  “What difference does that make?” Susan was almost in tears. “Women all over London simply reply saying they would be delighted to accept and that they will be bringing their daughters.”

  “You’re not my daughter.” As soon as she had said it, Anne knew this was a mistake, since it gave the moral high ground to Susan on a platter. The younger woman’s lip quivered. Across the table their son put his knife and fork down noisily.

  “She is your daughter-in-law, which would mean the same as ‘daughter’ in any other house.” There was something harsh in Oliver’s voice that was more pronounced when he was angry, and he was angry now.

  “Of course.” Anne turned to help herself to more sauce, deliberately making things normal again. “I just don’t think I would be justified in taking someone, anyone, to the house of a woman I barely know.”

  “A duchess you barely know, and I don’t know at all.” Apparently Susan had recovered. Enough to fight her corner, anyway. Anne glanced at the opaque faces of the servants. They would soon be enjoying this down in the servants’ hall, but, like the professionals they were, they gave no hint of having heard the exchange.

  “I didn’t see you in the office today, Oliver.” Mercifully, James found his son’s wife as tiresome as Anne did, even though he and Susan shared so many ambitions as far as the beau monde was concerned.

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “Why not?”

  “I went to inspect the work in Chapel Street. I wonder we have made the houses so small. Haven’t we surrendered a healthy share of profits?”

  Anne looked at her husband. However misguided James might be when dazzled by the glare of high Society, he certainly knew his business. “When you develop an area as we have done, you must build for the whole picture. You can’t only have palaces. You must house the supporters of the princes who live in the palaces. Their clerks and managers and upper servants. Then there must be a mews for their coaches and coachmen. They all take space, but it is space well used.”

  Susan’s petulant voice reentered the fray. “Have you given any more thought to where we might live, Father?” Anne watched her daughter-in-law. She was a good-looking woman, no doubt about it, with her clear complexion, green eyes, and auburn hair. She had an excellent figure and she dressed well. If only she could ever be satisfied.

  The issue of where the young couple should live was an old and tired one. James had offered various options as Belgravia was going up, but his ideas and theirs never seemed to match. They wanted something similar to the house in Eaton Square, while James believed they should cut their coat according to their cloth and start more modestly. In the end, Susan preferred to share a house that suited her pretensions rather than lower her standards, and so a kind of ritual had been achieved. From time to time, James would make suggestions. And Susan would turn them down.

  James smiled blandly. “I’d be happy to give you the pick of anything empty in Chester Row.”

  Susan wrinkled her nose slightly but softened her reaction with a laugh. “Aren’t they a little poky?”

  Oliver snorted. “Susan’s right. They’re far too small for entertaining, and I suppose I have a position to keep up, as your son.”

  James helped himself to another lamb chop. “They’re less poky than the first house I shared with your mother.” Anne laughed, which only served to annoy Oliver more.

  “I have been brought up very differently from the way you two began your lives. Maybe I do have grander expectations, but you have given them to me.” Of course there was truth in this. Why else had James insisted on Charterhouse and Cambridge, if he had not wanted Oliver to grow up thinking like a gentleman? In fact, his son’s marriage to Susan Miller, the daughter of a successful merchant like himself, had been a disappointment to James, who had hoped for something higher. Still, she was an only child, and there would be a considerable inheritance when the time came. That’s if Miller didn’t change his mind and cut her out. James noticed that Susan’s father was becoming more reluctant to hand over money to his daughter in the way he had done when the pair were first married. “She’s such a fool with it,” he’d said to James once, after a liquid luncheon, and it was difficult not to agree.

  “Well, well. We’ll see what can be done.” James laid down his cutlery and the footmen stepped in to remove the plates. “Cubitt’s had an interesting idea to do something with the Isle of Dogs.”

  “The Isle of Dogs? Is there anything there?” Anne smiled her thanks to the footman as her plate was taken. Naturally, James was far too important for any such thing.

  “The opening of the West India Docks and the East India Docks have made a hell of a difference—” He stopped, catching Anne’s expression, and started again. “Have made a terrific difference. Ramshackle buildings are going up every day, but Cubitt thinks we can build a solid community if we give respectable people—not just workers, but management—somewhere decent to live. It’s exciting.”

  “Will Oliver be part of this?” Susan kept her tone bright.

  “We’ll have to see.”

  “Of course I won’t,” said Oliver curtly. “When was I ever brought in to anything interesting?”

  “We seem to be failing on every count tonight.” James helped himself to another glass of wine from the decanter he kept by his place. It was an inescapable truth that Oliver was a disappointment to him, and the younger man suspected it. It did not make for a comfortable relationship.

  Agnes was beginning to whine, and so Anne picked her up, hiding her in the folds of her skirt. “We’ll be at Glanville for most of next month,” she said, in an effort to lighten the atmosphere. “I hope you’ll come down when you can. Susan, perhaps you can stay for a few days?” There was a silence. Glanville was their house in Somerset, an Elizabethan manor of great beauty that Anne had rescued from the brink of collapse. It was the one place which, before his marriage, Oliver had enjoyed above all others. But Susan had different ideas.

  “We will if we can.” She smiled briskly. “It’s such a ways.” He knew that, in addition to something splendid in London, Susan had her heart set on an estate near enough to the city to make the journey in no more than a few hours. Preferably with a large and modern house equipped with every convenience. The ancient, mottled, golden stone of Glanville, with its mullioned windows and uneven, gleaming floors, held no appeal for her. But Anne was undeterred. She would not give up the house or the estate—and James did not expect her to. She would try to encourage her son and his wife to appreciate its charms, but in the end, if Oliver didn’t want it, then she must find her own heir elsewhere. Which she was fully prepared to do.

  Anne had been right about the servants’ pleasure in their account of the upstairs conversation. Billy and Morris, the two footmen who had served at dinner, kept the table in the servants’ hall in stitches with their telling of it. That was until Mr. Turton came in. He paused on the threshold. “I hope there is no disrespect on display in this room.”

  “No, Mr. Turton,” said Billy, but one of the maids started to giggle.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Trenchard pay our wages, and for that they are entitled to be treated with dignity.”

  “Yes, Mr. Turton.”

  The giggles had subsided by now as Turton took his place at the table and the servants’ dinner began. The butler lowered his voice as he spoke to the housekeeper, Mrs. Frant, who sat in her usual place beside him. “Of course, they’re not what they like to pretend, and it is only the more obvious when they’re alone.”

  Mrs. Frant was a more forgiving person. “They’re r
espectable, polite, and honest to deal with, Mr. Turton. I’ve known far worse in households headed by a coronet.” She helped herself to some horseradish sauce.

  But the butler shook his head. “My sympathy is with Mr. Oliver. They’ve brought him up as a gentleman, but now they seem to resent him for wanting to be one.” Turton had no problems with the social system then operating, only with his own place in it.

  A sharp-faced woman in the black garb of a lady’s maid spoke up from farther down the table. “Why shouldn’t Mrs. Oliver have a house where she can entertain? She’s brought enough money to the table. I think it’s unjust and illogical of Mr. Trenchard to try to force them into a rabbit hutch when we all know he wants to be thought of as the head of a great family. Where’s the sense in that?”

  “Illogical? That’s a big word, Miss Speer,” said Billy, but she ignored him.

  “It was Mrs. Trenchard who provoked Mrs. Oliver at dinner,” said Morris.

  “She’s as bad as he is,” said Miss Speer, helping herself to a large slice of bread and butter from the plate before her.

  Mrs. Frant had more to add on the subject. “Well, I’m sorry to say it, Miss Speer, and I’m glad if you think her a good employer, but I find Mrs. Oliver very hard to please. You’d think she was an Infanta of Spain with all her airs and graces. But I’ve never had any trouble with Mrs. Trenchard. She’s straightforward in what she wants and I’ve no reason to complain.” The housekeeper was warming to her defense of their employers. “As to the younger pair—wanting houses and estates that are bigger and grander than his parents’, what’s he done to earn them? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “Gentlemen don’t ‘earn’ their houses, Mrs. Frant. They inherit them.”

  “We don’t see these things in the same way, Mr. Turton, so we’ll have to agree to differ.”

  Miss Ellis, Mrs. Trenchard’s maid, seated on Turton’s left, did not appear to disagree with the butler. “I think Mr. Turton’s right. Mr. Oliver only wants to live properly, and why shouldn’t he? I commend his efforts to better himself. But we must feel some sympathy for the master. It’s hard to get the trick of it in a single generation.”

  Turton nodded, as if his point had been proved. “I quite agree with you there, Miss Ellis.” And then the conversation turned to other topics.

  “Of course you can’t tell her! What are you talking about?” James Trenchard was having the greatest difficulty keeping his temper. He was in his wife’s bedroom where he generally slept, even though he was careful to have his own bedroom and dressing room farther down the landing, as he had read this was customary for aristocratic couples.

  The room in question was another tall and airy chamber, painted pale pink, with flowered silk curtains. Her husband’s rooms could have been the private apartments of the Emperor himself, but, as with all the rooms Anne had arranged for her own use, her bedroom was pretty rather than splendid. At this moment, she was in bed and they were alone. “But haven’t I a duty to her?”

  “What duty? You say yourself she was very rude.”

  Anne nodded. “Yes, but it was more complicated than that. The whole situation was so peculiar. She knew exactly who I was and that her son had been in love with our daughter. Why shouldn’t she know? Her sister had no reason to keep it secret.”

  “Then why didn’t she just say so honestly?”

  “I know and I agree. But perhaps she was trying to learn what kind of person I was before she would admit the connection.”

  “It doesn’t sound as if she has admitted it yet.”

  “She would have disapproved of it, fiercely, if she’d known at the time. We can be sure of that much.”

  “All the more reason to keep her in the dark.”

  James pulled off his silk dressing gown and flung it angrily over a chair.

  Anne closed her book and put it carefully on the little Sheraton table by her bed. She picked up the snuffer. “But when she said, ‘There will be nothing left of us…’ If you’d been there, you’d have been as touched as I was. I promise.”

  “You have taken leave of your reason if you think we should tell her. What can come of it? The ruin of Sophia’s reputation, the end of our chances as we label ourselves creatures of scandal—”

  Anne could feel her temper starting to rise. “That’s what you don’t like. The idea that Lady Somebody will turn up her nose at you because you had a daughter who was no better than she ought to be.”

  He was indignant. “I see. And you like the idea that Sophia should be remembered as a harlot?”

  This silenced her for a moment. Then she spoke, more calmly this time. “It’s a risk, of course, but I would ask her to keep it to herself. Of course I know I couldn’t force her to, but I don’t think we have the right to keep it from her that she has a grandson.”

  “We’ve kept it from them for more than a quarter of a century.”

  “But we didn’t know them. Now we do. Or at least, I know her.”

  James had climbed in beside his wife and blown out his candle. He lay down with his back to her. “I forbid it. I will not have our daughter’s memory defaced. Certainly not by her own mother. And get that dog off the bed.” Anne could see there was no point in arguing any further, so she gently snuffed out the candle on her side, settled down under the bedclothes, and lifted Agnes into the crook of her arm. But sleep was a long time in coming.

  The family had returned to England before Sophia told them. The aftermath of the battle consumed James’s efforts for some weeks, but at last he had brought them all back to London, to a house in Kennington that was an improvement on their previous abode but hardly a fashion leader. He continued to supply foodstuffs to the army, but catering to an army in peacetime was not the same as dealing with the drama of war, and it was increasingly clear to Anne that he was bored with the work, bored with the world he was operating in, bored with its lack of possibilities. Then he started to notice the renewed activity of London’s builders. The victory over Napoléon and the peace that followed had stoked a new confidence in the country’s future. The figure of the French emperor had loomed over them all, more perhaps than they had recognized, for twenty years, and now he was gone to a faraway island in the South Atlantic, and this time he would not be back. Europe was free, and it was time to look ahead. And so the day dawned when James came into the house flushed with excitement. Anne was in the kitchen, supervising the stores cupboard with her cook. There was no need for this. Their life and income had overtaken the way they used to do things, as James never tired of pointing out, and seeing his wife in an apron checking groceries was never very pleasing to him, especially as he was still flying high from their experiences in Brussels. On this particular evening, however, nothing could spoil his humor.

  “I have met an extraordinary man,” he said.

  “Oh?” Anne stared at the label on the flour. She was sure it was wrong.

  “A man who is going to rebuild London.” Anne didn’t know it then but he was right. Thomas Cubitt, a former ship’s carpenter, had devised a new method for managing a building project. He undertook to deal with, and employ, all the different trades involved: bricklayers, plasterers, tilers, plumbers, carpenters, stonemasons, painters. Those responsible for the commission would only ever have to deal with Cubitt and his brother, William. Everything else would be done for them.

  James paused. “Isn’t it brilliant?”

  Anne could see that there was considerable appeal in this system, and it might have a bright future, but was it worth throwing over a perfectly established career when James knew nothing about it? Still, she soon learned that he wouldn’t be shaken. “He’s building a new home for the London Institution at Finsbury Circus. He wants help with the funding and dealing with the suppliers.”

  “Which you have been doing all your working life.”

  “Exactly!” And so it began. James Trenchard the developer was born, and everything would have been as merry as a marriage bell if Sophia had no
t dropped her bombshell barely a month later.

  She came into her mother’s room one morning and sat on the bed. Anne was at her glass as Ellis finished her hair. The girl waited in near silence until the work was done. Anne knew something was coming, something big, but she wasn’t eager to begin it. At last, however, she accepted the inevitable. “Thank you, Ellis, you may go.” The maid was curious, naturally; if anything, more curious than the mother, but she picked up some linen for the laundry and closed the door behind her.

  “What is it?”

  Sophia stared at her. Then she spoke in a kind of gushing sigh. “I’m going to have a child.” Once, as a young girl, Anne had been kicked in the stomach by a pony, and she was reminded of that sensation when she heard the words.

  “When?” It seemed an oddly practical question, given the circumstance, but she didn’t see the point in screaming and writhing on the floor, even if it had considerable appeal.

  “The end of February. I think.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “The end of February.”

  Anne counted backward in her mind. “Do I have Lord Bellasis to thank for this?” Sophia nodded. “You stupid, stupid fool.” The girl nodded again. She was putting up no resistance. “How did it happen?”

  “I thought we were married.”

  Anne almost burst out laughing. What tomfoolery had her daughter been put through? “I take it you weren’t.”

  “No.”

  “No, of course you weren’t. Nor ever likely to be.” How could her child have been so absurd as to think Bellasis would really marry her? She felt a sudden wave of fury at James. He had encouraged this. He’d convinced the girl that impossible things were possible. “Tell me everything.”