The Ladies of Missalonghi (11 page)

“I intend to, from now on.” She glanced up at the much taller Alicia (who admitted to five feet ten but was actually six feet one) with a puckish grin. “Go on, Alicia, open it! I dyed it brown just for you.”

“You what?” Alicia began to fumble with the knots in the string, so Randolph came to her rescue with his pocket knife. After the string was cut the wrapping parted easily, and there lay the beautiful organdie dress and the ravishing hat, unspeakably smirched with what looked – and smelled – like fresh, sloppy, healthy cow and pig dung.

Alicia let out a squeak of horror that kept on growing and swelling until it became a long thin screech, and jumped away from the table as her mother, father, brothers, uncle and fiancé crowded round to see.

“You – you disgusting little trollop!” she snarled at the beaming Missy.

“Oh, I am not!” said Missy smugly.

“You’re worse than a trollop! And you may count yourself lucky indeed that I am too much of a lady to tell you exactly what I do think you are!” gasped Alicia, hardly knowing which had shocked her most, the deed, or the doer of the deed.

“Then you may count yourself unlucky that I am not too much of a lady to tell you exactly what I think you are, Alicia. I am only three days older than you, which puts you a lot closer to thirty-four than it does to thirty-three. Yet, here you are, mutton dressed up as lamb, brazen as brass, about to marry a boy hardly more than
half
your age! His father’s years are more suitable! And that makes you a cold-blooded cradle-snatcher! When Montgomery Massey died before you could haul him to the altar – thereby escaping a fate worse than death – you couldn’t see anyone on your horizon who was a tenth as good a catch. And then you spied poor Little Willie, still with all his baby-curls, playing with his hoop in his sailor suit, and you decided to be Lady Willie one day. I have no doubt that had the circumstances changed, you’d have been just as happy to be Lady Billy instead of Lady Willie – happier maybe, since the title’s already there. I admire your gall, Alicia, but I do not admire you. And I feel very sorry for poor Little Willie, who is going to lead a wretched life, a bone between his wife and his mother.”

The object of her pity was standing, with the rest of his relatives, gaping at Missy as if she had jumped stark naked out of a gigantic cake and proceeded to do the can-can. Aurelia had mercifully gone into hysterics, but so mesmerised was the rest of Missy’s audience that it had failed to notice the fact.

Sir William recovered first. “Get out of this house!”

“I’m on my way,” said Missy, looking very pleased.

“I will never forgive you for this!” cried Alicia. “How dare you? How
dare
you?”

“Oh, go bite your bum!” said Missy, and laughed. “It’s big enough,” she added, and departed.

This was the proverbial last straw; Alicia stiffened until she became utterly rigid, gave a gurgling moaning shriek, and fell over with a crash to join her mother on the floor.

Oh, how
satisfying
that had been! But as she walked away down the gradual hill of George Street that led into the main thoroughfare of Byron, Missy’s elation faded. Compared to the topic under discussion during her first and unnoticed tenure of the drawing room, the presentation of Alicia’s violated clothing was picayune. Those poor women! Missy knew as little about the world of company business as her mother and aunts, but she was fully intelligent enough to have caught the drift of Sir William’s words. She even knew of the shares, for Drusilla kept hers and Octavia’s both in the small tin cash-box that lay inside her wardrobe and held things like the deeds to her house and five acres of land. Ten shares each, twenty shares altogether. Which meant that Aunt Cornelia and Aunt Julia probably had ten shares each as well. Dividend. That was obviously some sort of periodic payment, a share in the company’s profits.

How very despicable most of her male relations were! Sir William, eager to keep that disgraceful policy of the first Sir William’s going, so that the hapless female members of his family who pinched and scraped in grinding but genteel poverty should have none of the fruits that accrued from the bottling of what was, after all, in God’s gift rather than in any Hurlingford’s. Uncle Maxwell, who was the worst kind of thief, rich in his own right, yet stealing the eggs and butter and orchardings of his poor relations because he had bullied them into believing that to sell elsewhere would be an unforgivable act of disloyalty. Uncle Herbert, who had bought up many of those houses on five acres in his time, always for a great deal less than they were worth, being the same kind of bully as his brother Maxwell. Only he was worse, because he stole back the little he paid out as well, by telling his victims that the investment schemes designed to make that little a little more had failed.

Not only the male relations were despicable, Missy amended, in a mood to dish out criticisms fairly. If the Aurelias and Augustas and Antonias had brought pressure to bear, having married on the inside of the clan fortunes, maybe they might have succeeded in changing things, for the worst bully is vulnerable to being bullied by his wife.

Well, something must be done. But what? Missy debated carrying her tale home, then decided she would not be believed, or if believed, that her mother and aunts would still end in being bullied out of their just due. Something
had
to be done, and done soon, before Alicia came smarming round to secure the shares, as secure them she undoubtedly would.

The library was open today; Missy glanced through the window expecting to see Aunt Livilla’s grim form behind the desk, but there instead was Una. So she slowed down, turned round, and backtracked.

“Missy! What a treat! I didn’t expect to see you today, darling,” said Una, smiling as if she really did think it a treat to see the family trollop cum scragbag.

“I’m so angry!” cried Missy, and sat down on the hard chair provided for browsers, fanning herself with her hand.

“What’s the matter?”

Suddenly realising she couldn’t possibly expose that small clutch of close blood-relations to the contempt of a person as remotely connected to the Byron arm of the clan as Una, she had to compromise with a lame, “Oh, nothing.”

Una didn’t attempt to probe. She just nodded and smiled, that lovely radiance emanating from skin and hair and nails subtly soothing rage.

“How about a cup of tea before the long hike home?” she asked, getting up.

A cup of tea assumed the proportions of a life-giving elixir; “Yes, please!” said Missy with fervour.

Una disappeared behind the last bookshelf at the back of the room, where in a small cubicle there lay facilities for making tea; there was no toilet, the norm in Byron shops, for everyone was expected to use the toilets in the Byron Waters Baths, and be quick about it.

To investigate the novels while she waited seemed like a good idea to Missy, so she moved to the back of the room and inched along the shelf that came hard up against the edge of Aunt Livilla’s desk. And her eye in moving sideways round the desk to where the shelf continued on its far side encountered a familiar-looking sheaf of papers lying there. A packet of share certificates in the Byron Bottle Company.

Una emerged. “Kettle’s on, but it takes time to boil from scratch on a spirit stove.” Her eyes followed Missy’s, then came to rest on Missy’s face. “Isn’t it lovely?” she asked.

“What?”

“The money that’s being offered for Byron Bottle Company shares, of course. Ten pounds a pop! Unheard of! Wallace had a few shares of mine, you know, and when we separated he gave them back to me – said he didn’t want anything that reminded him of the Hurlingfords. I only have ten shares, but I can definitely use a hundred quid at the moment, darling. And just between you and me, Auntie Livvie is a bit on the short side too, so I’ve persuaded her to give me her twenty shares to sell while I’m selling mine.”

“How did Aunt Livilla manage to acquire shares?”

“Richard gave them to her when he couldn’t pay her back in cash the time he needed money so desperately he actually borrowed from her. Poor Richard! He never can bet on the right horses. And she’s such a stickler for repayment of loans, even when it’s her only beloved son on the borrowing end. So he signed over a few of his shares in the Byron Bottle Company to her, and that shut her up.”

“Has he got more?”

“Naturally. He’s a male Hurlingford, darling. But I do believe he may have sold out completely, because it was Richard put me onto this godsend of a buyer.”

“How can you sell someone else’s shares?”

“With a Power of Attorney. See?” Una held up a stiff foolscap form. “You get it at the stationer’s, like a will form. And you fill it out with the details, and you sign it, and whoever is giving you permission to act on her behalf signs it, and someone signs it as a witness.”

“I see,” said Missy, forgetting all about perusing the novels. She sat down again. “Una, do you have an address for whoever is buying Byron Bottle shares?”

“Right here, darling, though I’m taking the whole kit and kaboodle down to Sydney in person on Monday to sell them, it’s safer. That’s why I’m minding the library today, so I can have Monday off.” She got up and went back to make the tea.

Missy thought hard. Why couldn’t she, Missy, have a try at getting hold of the aunts’ certificates before Alicia came asking for them? Why should Alicia fill her with defeat when in their sole clash just concluded, Alicia had been the loser?

By the time Una came back with the tea tray, Missy had made up her mind.

“Oh, thank you.” She took her cup gratefully. “Una, is it imperative that you go to Sydney on Monday? Could you possibly make it Tuesday instead?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“I have an appointment with a Macquarie Street specialist next Tuesday morning,” Missy explained carefully. “I was going with Alicia, but... I don’t think she’s going to want my company, somehow. It’s possible I may have some of these shares to sell, and if I could go with you, it would be easier. I’ve only been to Sydney a couple of times when I was a child, so I don’t know the place.”

“Oh, what fun! Tuesday it is.” Una fairly glittered, so bright had the light in her become.

“I’ll have to ask you for another favour, I’m afraid.”

“Of course, darling. What?”

“Would you mind going next door to the stationer’s and buying me four of these Power of Attorney forms? You see, if I go myself, Uncle Septimus is sure to want to know what I need Power of Attorney forms for, and the next thing he’ll mention it to Uncle Billy, or Uncle Maxwell, or Uncle Herbert, and – well, I’d rather keep my business to myself.”

“I’ll go the minute I finish my cup of tea, while you’re here to mind the shop for me.”

And so it was arranged, including Una’s driving out to Missalonghi on Sunday afternoon at five o’clock to witness the signing of the forms. Luckily this time Missy had her own little money-purse with her, and luckily it contained two shillings; the forms were expensive, at threepence each.

“Thank you,” said Missy, stowing the rolled-up forms in her shopping bag.

She had decided upon some books as well.

“Good lord!” exclaimed Una, glancing at the titles. “Are you sure you want
The Troubled Heart
? I thought you said you read it to death all last week.”

“I did. But I still want to read it again.” And into the bag alongside the forms went
The Troubled Heart
.

“I’ll see you at Missalonghi on Sunday afternoon, and don’t worry, Auntie Livvie never minds lending me her horse and sulky,” said Una, accompanying Missy to the door, where she deposited a light kiss on Missy’s unaccustomed cheek. “Chin up, girl, you can do it,” she said, and pushed Missy out into the street.

“Mother,” said Missy that evening as she sat in the warmth of the kitchen with Drusilla and Octavia, “have you still got those Byron Bottle shares Grandfather left you and Aunt Octavia in his will?”

Drusilla looked up from her beading warily; though the altered pecking-order was of her own making, she still found it a little difficult to accept the fact that she was no longer the boss-chook. And she had learned very quickly to spot the more subtle, oblique approach Missy employed, so that she knew something was in the wind now.

“Yes, I’ve still got them,” she said.

Missy put her tatting in her lap and looked across at her mother very seriously. “Mother, do you trust me?”

Drusilla blinked. “Of course I do!”

“How much is a new Singer sewing machine?”

“I don’t honestly know, but I imagine at least twenty or thirty pounds, perhaps a great deal more.”

“If you had yet another hundred pounds besides the two hundred pounds Aunt Aurelia paid for Alicia’s linens, would you buy yourself a Singer sewing machine?”

“I would certainly be tempted.”

“Then give me your shares in Byron Bottle and let me sell them for you. I can get you ten pounds a share in Sydney.”

Both Drusilla and Octavia had ceased working.

“Missy dear, they’re worthless,” said Octavia gently.

“No, they are not worthless,” said Missy. “You’ve been duped by Uncle Billy and Uncle Herbert and the rest, is all. You should have been paid what’s called a dividend upon them every so often, because the Byron Bottle Company is an extremely prosperous concern.”

“No, you’re wrong!” insisted Octavia, shaking her head.

“I’m right. If you two and Aunt Cornelia and Aunt Julia had only taken yourselves off to a disinterested solicitor in Sydney years ago, you might be a lot richer today than you are, and that’s the truth.”

“We could never go behind the menfolk’s back, Missy,” said Octavia. “It would be a breach of faith and trust in them. They know better than we do, which is why they look after us and watch out for us. And they’re
family
!”

“Don’t I know it?” cried Missy from behind clenched teeth. “Aunt Octavia, your menfolk have been trading on the fact that they’re family ever since the Hurlingfords began! They
use
you! They exploit you! When have we ever got a fair price from Uncle Maxwell for our produce? Do you honestly swallow all those hard-luck stories of his about being done down in the markets himself, so how can he afford to pay us more? He’s as rich as Croesus! And when have you ever seen proof that Uncle Herbert actually did lose your money in an unlucky investment? He’s richer than Croesus! And didn’t Uncle Billy tell you in person that those shares were worthless?”