Penelope Goes to Portsmouth (9 page)

‘I’ll have none o’ that,’ retorted Mr Wilkins. ‘She’s had the best of everything.’

‘In material terms, yes,’ agreed Lord Augustus.

Mr Wilkins bit back the angry reply he had been about to make. He had no desire to quarrel with a man he was already marking out as his future son-in-law.

Instead he said with a forced laugh, ‘I must be taking my puss home. Here is my address, my lord.’ He handed over his card. ‘You will no doubt be calling.’

Hannah waited hopefully.

‘I am afraid not,’ said Lord Augustus. ‘I shall be much occupied while I am here.’

Penelope felt exactly as if he had slapped her. All her fears about that kiss were true. He had only been amusing himself.

‘Coming, Papa,’ she said meekly. ‘Papa, do give Miss Pym a card and tell her to call, for she has been kindness itself.’

‘Gladly,’ said Mr Wilkins, taking out his card-case again.

Hannah hated to see Penelope leave. She felt they had all become a sort of ill-assorted family, and now the family was breaking up, with no happy ending for anyone but Benjamin.

After Penelope and her father had left, Hannah sent Benjamin up to bed, telling him to stay there in the morning until she had found the services of a doctor to attend him. Mr Cato yawned and remarked he was devilish tired and took himself off. Hannah was left alone with Lord Augustus.

‘I do not know how you do it, Miss Pym,’ said Lord Augustus admiringly. ‘I am nigh dead with fatigue, and yet you look bright as a button.’

‘I cannot help thinking you might have found time, my lord, to call on Mr Wilkins.’

‘You mean Mr Wilkins’s daughter. She is a very
pretty little girl, Miss Pym. What more would you have?’

He looked down his nose at her, his eyes cold, as if defying her to suggest he should even contemplate paying court to the daughter of a chandler.

Hannah had, of course, been just about to pursue that matter further. But she abruptly changed tack.

‘I did expect you might want to call,’ she said, ‘and it was quite silly of me. Despite Mr Wilkins’s ambitions, I really cannot see him in the end throwing his daughter away on a penniless lord. I thought he seemed a man of good sense.’

‘So you do not think I am a prize in any way?’ mocked Lord Augustus.

‘Of course not,’ said Hannah comfortably. ‘Be so good as to ring the bell and ask the landlord to fetch tea, I do enjoy a dish of bohea before bedtime.’

He gave her a slightly baffled look. Mr Wilkins had been so obviously hopeful of a match between Lord Augustus and his daughter that it had thrown cold water on that young man’s affections. Penniless he might be, but Lord Augustus knew he was considered a catch. He was used to being pursued. He had great contempt for his friends who had stooped to marry rich merchants’ daughters for their dowries. Penelope Wilkins was worth more, so much more, than some fortune-hunting adventurer.

After Hannah had been served tea, she looked across the table at him. Her eyes turned blue and seemed, for such as Hannah Pym, to look unusually innocent.

‘I shall call,’ said Hannah, ‘for as you rightly accused me, I am a determined matchmaker. Penelope Wilkins is likely to fall for the first eligible man, and that will never do. I am determined to persuade her parents to take her to balls and assemblies. She will become accustomed to masculine admiration and will learn how to discriminate between the genuine and the false. With her strict upbringing, a man who marries her for her money and then neglects her after marriage will not do. She needs a lover as well as a husband. Someone who will take her in his arms and cherish her.’

The picture of Penelope in someone else’s arms was suddenly appalling to Lord Augustus. He glared at Hannah. He was sure she had meant to have just that effect with her words.

‘And you have much to do yourself, my lord,’ Hannah went on. ‘There is, after all, your uncle to be courted for his money-bags.’

‘Look here, Miss Pym. We have been through a lot together. I am reluctant to call you impertinent.’

‘I apologize most sincerely,’ said Hannah meekly. ‘And now I must see to Benjamin.’

She rose and left Lord Augustus to his uncomfortable thoughts. Those thoughts turned towards his uncle. His uncle was his mother’s brother. He was a retired admiral called Lord James Abernethy and lived in seclusion in Portsmouth. Lord Augustus had last seen him some ten years before. That ten years was a very long time. He could hardly shake the old man by the hand and say, ‘If you cannot give me any money now, could you leave me some in your will?’

His conscience gave a sharp, nasty jab and he blamed Hannah Pym bitterly for its awakening. In the clubs of London, waiting for relatives to die was a well-known occupation, or rather preoccupation. I wonder what it is like to be old and realize at last that one has not long to live by the visits of relatives one has not seen in years, he reflected. 

The money he had won from Mr Cato would soon be gone. He had a small allowance annually from a trust fund, and his next payment was not due for another two months. He would need to find a pawnshop and pop some piece of jewellery.

He wondered what it would be like if he paid a call on the old boy and tried to entertain him and then just left without asking for anything. He felt a certain lightening of his spirit. Dammit, he thought, I
won’t
ask Uncle for anything. I’ll see if he can put me up for a few days, that’s all. And it would be only civil to call on Mr Wilkins. After all, he had paid for dinner.

Hannah swung open her casement window in the morning, prepared for her first sight of the ocean – and looked straight into the windows of the buildings opposite. But there were sea-gulls wheeling about and her nostrils twitched as she smelled tar and fish and salt.

But before she went exploring, Benjamin had to be attended to. The inn manager, already appealed to the previous evening, told her the physician would be along to attend to Benjamin within the hour. When Hannah went down to the coffee room, Mr Cato was just entering the inn. ‘Ship sailed yesterday,’ he said
as soon as he saw Hannah. ‘My fault really. It doesn’t do to cut these things too fine. I’ll be here for another three weeks at least. What are your plans, Miss Pym?’

‘I have to wait and see that Benjamin is well enough to get up,’ said Hannah. ‘Then I must go out and find him new clothes. And
then
I shall see the sea for the first time.’

‘For the first time? Well! Might tag along with you. Got nothing better to do. Tell you what, you look after that footman of yours and I’ll go and get him some clothes. No, no. My pleasure. If I feel it all comes to too much, I’ll let you foot the bill. Why, there’s our Miss Trenton.’

Miss Trenton came into the coffee room and stood irresolute, her face a little pink and her eyes averted. But choleric as he was, the American seemed incapable of sustaining any animosity towards even such as Miss Trenton. ‘Over here,’ he called. ‘We’re making plans for the day.’

As Miss Trenton came up to them, he said cheerfully, ‘Miss Pym has never seen the sea, so as soon as we make sure that Benjamin is all right, we’re going out. Care to come along?’

Miss Trenton sat down next to Hannah, her back ramrod-straight. ‘I cannot,’ she said quietly. ‘I need to go to an old friend who runs a seminary and ask for employment. That is, if she will have me.’

There was a startled silence. Miss Trenton gave a thin smile. ‘As you have both probably guessed, I do not own a private carriage. I am an unemployed governess.’

‘Yes, we knew you didn’t have a carriage,’ said Mr Cato bluntly. A shaft of sunlight shone through the leaded windows of the coffee room. ‘Going to be a grand day,’ went on Mr Cato. And to Hannah’s horror he turned to Miss Trenton and said, ‘Come with us. Put off your interview another day. We all deserve a holiday, hey?’

Tears started to Miss Trenton’s eyes. She felt after the evening before that she had known the bottomless depths of humiliation and could go no lower, but what she had to say, she felt, put her beyond the bounds of ordinary human friendship. ‘I cannot stay,’ she said, ‘for I would not be able to pay another night here. If I do not get this position, I do not know what I will do.’

She drew out a handkerchief and began to cry in earnest. Hannah still could not like her, but Mr Cato seemed considerably moved. ‘Come, madam, I will pay your shot,’ he said. ‘Dry your eyes and keep Miss Pym company while I get some duds for our footman.’

Miss Pym and Miss Trenton were left alone. ‘I suppose you despise me,’ said Miss Trenton in a low voice.

‘I despised you for your malice towards Miss Wilkins,’ said Hannah. ‘But for being poor? Nonsense. Wait here and I will see to Benjamin and we will have breakfast together.’

As she rose, the manager came up leading the physician, and Hannah took the doctor upstairs. He examined Benjamin’s head and said he should stay in bed quietly for the day, but that the wound was clean
and there was no sign of fever. Hannah wrote all this down for Benjamin and then rang the bell and ordered a large breakfast for the footman. She then wrote on a piece of paper, ‘Do you want anything?’

Benjamin wrote in reply, ‘Books or newspapers?’

Hannah ordered the morning newspapers from the waiter who brought in the breakfast and then went back to the coffee room to have her own breakfast with Miss Trenton.

Mr Cato returned in triumph with a red plush livery, rather worn, underclothes, shirt, stockings, and a pair of buckled shoes. ‘How kind of you!’ exclaimed Hannah. ‘But will these things fit? The shoes, for example?’

‘Bound to.’ Mr Cato looked them over. ‘I have a good eye for size.’

‘Then I shall take them up to him,’ said Hannah. ‘It is very good of you, Mr Cato, and so I shall tell him.’

‘Don’t be all day writing things down,’ said Mr Cato with a grin. ‘You’ve got to see the sea.’

When Hannah had gone, he said to Miss Trenton, ‘Don’t go messing your face up with more tears, ma’am. The sun is shining and we shall all have a pleasant day. Then you may go to that seminary tomorrow and try your luck. She’s bound to take you, ain’t she?’

‘I do not know,’ said Miss Trenton. ‘Oh, I was so jealous of Miss Wilkins. I have taught so many girls such as she – pampered and spoilt with doting parents, never having to worry about where the next penny is coming from, never having to grovel.’

‘That’s the way of the world,’ said Mr Cato, ‘and a nasty old world it becomes if you turn bitter, Miss Trenton, for people have a habit of giving back as good as they get. You cannot go around lying about carriages and puffing yourself up and sneering at people and expecting them to deal kindly with you, now can you?’

But such as Miss Trenton cannot remain in a state of humility for long. She began to feel that she was ill done by, that she had really done nothing wrong, that Penelope Wilkins probably was a trollop, but the prospect of a whole day’s holiday with her bills being paid at the inn by the generous Mr Cato was not to be thrown away lightly. So she bowed her head and looked suitably ashamed of herself and Mr Cato smiled on her indulgently and reflected there was good in everyone.

Lord Augustus decided, not for the first time in his life, that a title was a very useful thing to have. No inn-keeper was ever vulgar enough to press for settlement in advance and he was able to hire a light carriage and airily ask for the charge to be put on his bill. He had discovered by inquiring at the inn that his uncle lived right in the centre of the town, and when he found the house his first thought was that his uncle was surely in straitened circumstances to live in such a place. It was a tall, narrow, dark building wedged between a haberdasher’s and a jeweller’s premises. He rapped on the brass door-knocker and waited.

After some time, a pretty little housemaid answered
the door. She bobbed a curtsy and took his card and asked him in a shy whisper to wait in the hall.

The hall, reflected Lord Augustus, was more like a cupboard. It was a tiny place dominated by a large painting of a sailing ship in full rig on one wall. The floor was sanded and a narrow uncarpeted stair led to the rooms above.

After some time, the same little maid pattered lightly down the stairs with the instructions that my lord was to follow her to the ‘crow’s nest’.

‘How very nautical,’ murmured Lord Augustus as he made his way up the narrow staircase after her. ‘Why the crow’s nest, child?’

‘Because it’s at the top of the house, my lord,’ said the housemaid. Lord Augustus toiled up the stairs and then stooped his head to enter a small room that was like a ship’s cabin. His uncle did not appear to have changed much with the passing of the years. The admiral was a small, slight man with a thin, scholarly face. The room was decorated with souvenirs from the admiral’s travels – hideous wooden masks, small idols, brassware, carved ivory elephants, all lying about in a glorious jumble. At the window stood a large brass telescope.

Lord Abernethy, the retired admiral, had the same deep-blue eyes as his nephew. He did not rise to greet Lord Augustus but regarded him shrewdly. ‘And what brings you, nephew?’

Lord Augustus sat down opposite his uncle and sighed. He had been about to say that he had come to Portsmouth to visit the old boy out of the kindness of
his heart, but somehow he now felt that lies, even polite ones, would not do; in fact, they might hurt. He wondered why it had never crossed his mind or the minds of any of his roistering friends that the relatives on whom they so assiduously preyed might only pay up because they were lonely.

‘The fact is, sir,’ he said, ‘that I travelled to Portsmouth to ask you for money. I then decided not to do so. I discovered to my surprise that I wanted to see you just the same, so here I am.’

Lord Abernethy looked quite shocked. ‘What has been happening to you, my lad?’ he cried. ‘Methodists got you? The only time anyone of my age sees anyone of your age is when he’s being sponged on. I admire your honesty, and yet righteousness sits oddly on you. We never were a righteous family, Gus, and that’s a fact. You wouldn’t like to try to wheedle some blunt out of me to put me at ease?’