Lempriere's Dictionary (35 page)

‘John.’ He turned. It was Lydia. ‘Have you found it?’ he asked.

‘No, listen. Did Rosalie truly visit you?’

‘Of course, why on earth would I say …’ but then he saw her expression, which was serious. There was a pause.

‘No,’ he said quietly, then ‘sorry’ and it was understood by both of them that this was for the earlier comment, not the lie.

‘She was dragged off by someone. Strange voice,’ Lydia said. ‘Bet and Karin knew something about it, but they have disappeared too. It’s not my loss, but still….’

‘Bet and Karin?’

‘Ah ha!’ from further down the road.

‘Dressed in blue….’

‘Yes….’ And he had seen one of them too, outside the coffee shop, strangely. But no Rosalie. He told Lydia as much.

‘Of course, and no matter …’ she began, but the Pug was bellowing that he had found it, that it was broken and Warburton-Burleigh was the son of a whore. They returned to the coach and the journey continued with the Pug in a sulk. He would emerge from it periodically. Warburton-Burleigh would wave the broken pipe about and the Pug would submerge once more. It was amusement of sorts. Lemprière’s apprehension grew as they drew nearer the De Veres’. He was wearing a new frock coat and cloak provided by Septimus earlier that day, a loan.

‘Very good,’ Septimus had said when he had tried it on, and the same thing as he had leafed through the completed sheets of the dictionary. Their collection had been his main business. ‘Danae?’ He had been reading the final page.

‘Not yet….’ Lemprière was ready to reprise Septimus’ earlier instructions in explanation, but was cut short.

‘Good, good …’ from Septimus. It had been very business-like. No trace of the puzzling vagueness when they had parted company at the coffee shop.

‘So who will be there, I mean, exactly?’ Lemprière asked brightly during a lull in the talk. But the coach jolted violently and when all had righted themselves the question was forgotten. He had to ask again.

‘Everyone,’ Septimus told him. ‘Teddy’s friends and acquaintances, his mother’s.’ Septimus caught the need for reassurance in Lemprière’s silence.

‘There is usually music, eating of course and a display of some sort….’

‘Fireworks,’ added the Pug. Lemprière nodded.

‘Then there’s the meat,’ said Walter Warburton-Burleigh. Lydia sighed theatrically. ‘Fat girls whose paters own things up north.’

‘The late earl had shipping interests, lots of old sea men, Company boys,’ Septimus went on. ‘Military types … Teddy knows them all. His mother packs the place with widows and dowagers, but they bring their own friends. Strange mixture truly; I noticed Dundas last year….’

‘Dullest man in England,’ interjected Warburton-Burleigh.

‘… and Byrne, Byrne was there, who else?’

‘Chadwick?’

‘Not this year,’ said the Pug. ‘He died.’ Lemprière looked up in surprise at the name of his father’s old solicitor.

‘And that creepy little fellow, said nothing the whole evening….’ Walter Warburton-Burleigh tried to recall a name.

‘Who was he with?’ asked Septimus.

‘Alone I believe, no, no he was with Croesus.’

‘Croesus?’ Lemprière was being startled from several directions by the exchange.

‘As in rich as.’

‘Viscount Casterleigh,’ Septimus deciphered, taking a look at his friend. Casterleigh.

‘And the Pork Club,’ Warburton-Burleigh shouted.

‘Oink!’ Septimus and the Pug shouted back, raising an imaginary toast.

‘Everyone,’ Lydia said in conclusion to this.

‘Of course! You would know Casterleigh. His Jersey house….’ Septimus said suddenly to Lemprière, who was sitting back with his face tight and expressionless, Casterleigh’s name and Juliette already rising in his thoughts but he had time also to think of his drunken confession on the bridge in the rain. He had not mentioned Casterleigh to Septimus after all, nor his daughter. A sort of relief flooded privately through him.

‘Yes, yes! I know the man,’ he admitted readily and explained about his role in the library on Jersey. Warburton-Burleigh looked at him with renewed interest.

‘Naturally you were introduced to his daughter?’ he questioned slyly. Lemprière thought for a moment, he was giving nothing away.

‘Naturally,’ he agreed.

‘Ah ha,’ said Warburton-Burleigh shortly and Lemprière saw from the expressions on his companions’ faces that he was flatly disbelieved. He protested, describing her in persuasive detail, her manners and habitual gestures, all of it etched indelibly in his memory.

‘We’ve all
seen
her,’ said the Pug.

‘He guards her like Acrisius,’ added Septimus. Lemprière looked sharply at him.

‘Think what you will,’ he said. And abruptly he hardly cared whether they believed him or not. She might be present that evening. The prospect already raced in his brain. His companions were forgotten. He could see lights in the darkness beyond the window, spelling Juliette, Juliette perhaps.

‘We are here,’ said Lydia as they approached.

‘And late,’ said Septimus.

It was true. Coaches filled the courtyard and spilled down the drive. Hedges and fences extended out into a darkness that harboured trees and scrub land, wild shrubs, rootless brambles and other sprawling plant life: all of it out there, unseen, waiting and being secretly green. Lydia, Lemprière, Warburton-Burleigh, the Pug then Septimus clambered out of the coach stiff-limbed, yawning and stretching into the cold evening air. The night sky was blacker than before.

As Lemprière rounded the coach, the house came into view. A tall construction of white plaster and timbers with transoms and gothic quatrefoils studding its face, more of it kept appearing as his eyes were drawn to either side by gables and straggling roof lines which twisted back into the darkness where they were lost in a scrum of haphazard additions, low galleries and out-houses. The front at least was impressive with mullion windows flanking a massive black door, country oak and a large knocker on it which Septimus took charge of and rapped, one, two, three reports echoing in the hall beyond like a huge stone drum.

All five waited for the door to be opened, silenced for the moment by their different anticipations, and Lemprière thought again of Mister Chadwick, whom he had never met and would never see. ‘Froze,’ hissed the Pug between clenched teeth.

The door was opened. Mister Chadwick had stood here too and wondered at the reason for his invitation. A small bald man in a red coat was being buried under cloaks. The man was asking him, ‘Sir?’ Lemprière handed the man his coat and walked through behind the others. Why had his father’s solicitor been wanted here?

‘Through here, sir.’ Lemprière nodded. ‘Quite a night I would imagine, sir.’ But Lemprière only caught the thread of the butler’s patter as he was led within the house, until that voice was replaced by a more general murmur, a different thread. The general hum grew louder and broke up into a jumble of tones and accents, with odd voices breaking through like heads popping up out of a maze, more and more of them until the sound seemed to reach a new level and then another as the butler threw open a pair of double doors and the gathering beyond was unmuzzled.

The noise crashed out and broke over Lemprière in a rich cackling babble, a roaring noise of chit chat with glasses and cups chinking together and the scene was full of sculpted women jabbering to each other, their menfolk lining the walls disputing amongst themselves with lines of servants nudging their way through the crowd carrying trays and decanters, crates of bottles, table linen and chairs, ’scuse, ’scuse in apologetic procession. Cabriole chairs snarled themselves and hindered the servants’ progress. Garish ormolu side tables resisted any sensible usage. Trays filled with empty glassware littered the floor, inducing mild anxiety in the revellers, and a focus for conversation amongst the women. The men disdained their chit chat, preferring to talk of Godolphin Arabian, Mendoza’s next bout and the curious late explosions aboard a slave ship, the
Polly
, off Bristol, followed a fortnight later by explosions at Mr Hervey’s gunpowder works in Battle, both something of a mystery.

‘It’s in the nature of the beast,’ said Mister Lifter of the Tenth Foot. ‘Never any evidence.’ He was on edge, a captaincy was in the offing.

‘
Darling
, she was quite the
la Chudleigh
. One wonders why they dress at all….’ The speaker all hip pads, bustles and layers of linen as Lemprière squeezed through the crush after Septimus until they reached the far side together and looked about for the others, who were lost to view. The hall was large, its vaulted ceiling providing a great sounding chamber for the hundreds of guests below. Lemprière watched as the women swirled about, gradually prising the men out of their resistant huddles and swapping them about in a freer commingling of the sexes. Elderly ladies hobbled about on silver-topped canes, wearing huge floral hats and
malades imaginaires
while their stiff-gaited consorts followed in train clutching their sticks. Younger folk clutched glasses to their chests, as the oldsters picked beady-eyed paths through their midst at a snail’s pace. Their eyes rolled heavenwards in mock impatience. Gallants put on little displays. Girls peeked out from behind their nosegays.

Lemprière recognised faces from the Pork Club, the toothy fellow with a moustache, the bottle-banger and others. No Rosalie, but Lydia’s friends and then the earl who looked over and waved. ‘Come over,’ mouthed across the crush of bodies. No Septimus either. He had slid away some little time before, waylaid by a po-faced dowager to whom he was now recounting his adventure in a Sicilian bordello while the woman’s skittish teenaged nieces listened wide-eyed in silence.

‘Appalling!’ barked the dowager after the recitation and a small chunk of her face powder dislodged itself to fall in her glass. The nieces bit their lips and looked away. Septimus winked at them. Lemprière floundered. He had pressed determinedly towards the earl at his signal but somehow had been deflected. Suddenly, the earl was nowhere to be seen. He set off again, but
the hall had grown even more crowded with conversations and informal greetings, little frigid exchanges between polite enemies and hearty embraces going on all about him, distracting him so that he found himself eavesdropping on the party-chatter of his fellow guests.

‘… and the cook shuts the dog in, like she was told, gets on with the tripe, and when she looks around again, the dog’s gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Gone. So she nips out and starts shouting for the dog, but the bloody thing is hiding, or it’s run off. So she puts down a lump of meat and just waits for its stomach, thinks, dog’ll follow.’

‘No stomach, no dog.’

‘Right, so she puts down this lump of meat….’

A dark little man with a dipped moustache carrying a music stand carved a path between Lemprière and the story, forcing him sideways, where a flamboyant gentleman in a purple cravat pitched up a word that fell on him like long expected bad news.

‘… tortoises.’

‘Absurd!’

‘Tortoises, I tell you. Hundreds of gigantic tortoises. Read your Livy. The siege of Sparta.’

‘Marmaduke, are you certain?’

‘Of course I’m certain.’ Lemprière was certain too, sniggering to himself at the confusion of the tortoise battle-formation with the animal itself. Marmaduke was now miming the approach of the massed tortoise-ranks. The dark little man was returning with a large heavy chest, dragging it with difficulty through the least tractable part of the crowd. He barged through, red in the face and panting as Lemprière stepped out of the way for the third time to hear Marmaduke explain how the heroic Roman tortoises had smashed through the Spartan lines to win a great victory.

‘Never heard that before eh? Well everyone will be hearing about it soon, everyone’ll be
seeing
it, the whole thing….’ His companion looked blank, then aghast.

‘You are not proposing to put this spectacle on the stage, Marmaduke….’ An actor, thought Lemprière.

‘It is my stage,’ Marmaduke came back at him, then noticed the horrified expression. ‘But no, not
on
the stage. Above it.’

‘Above?’ A theatre manager, Lemprière revised his earlier thought, then imagined the giant tortoises swinging from the wings above a production of, what, the Oresteia? A maniac.

‘On the roof!’ Marmaduke exclaimed. I’ve already commissioned them, the Coade manufactory will cast them six feet across, four guineas each, less if I take more than a dozen.’

‘More than a dozen!’

‘I thought perhaps two dozen or so, with one on the parapet, a tortoise-rampant. We could have tours of the roof before each performance, notices in the news-sheets, that sort of thing….’ Marmaduke’s companion was shaking his head and murmuring,
oh dear, oh dear, oh dear
, very softly to himself while Marmaduke clapped him on the back and Lemprière thought of Æschylus and the tortoise predestined for his skull, then lurched as the moustachioed man passed by again, this time carrying a sheaf of papers and a small brass screwdriver. Lemprière watched him disappear and thought perhaps he should follow and make another attempt to find the earl, or Septimus, or Lydia, the Pug even, even perhaps Warburton-Burleigh.

‘John! Good man!’ A great clap on his back knocked the wind out of him so that Lemprière coughed and spluttered, then turned to see Edmund, the Earl of Braith with a broad grin on his face and a funnel-shaped object in his hand which he raised to his lips then bellowed through it, ‘Good to see you!’ Several people turned, including Marmaduke.

‘Have you met Marmaduke Stalkart?’ The earl took them both by the elbow and drew them together. ‘Marmaduke is the proprietor of the Haymarket Opera House, sadly dark at the present….’

‘Soon to re-open.’ Marmaduke offered his hand which Lemprière took. The conversation flagged immediately. The earl looked from one to the other. ‘You must be wondering why you came?’ he said breezily to Lemprière in mock apology for the evening.

‘Yes, why
am
I here?’ demanded Lemprière.

‘You are here on your merits,’ said the earl. ‘But I believe my mother, Lady de Vere, wanted to speak with you.’