Читать книгу The Mulberry Empire - Philip Hensher - Страница 21

Half a mile away, the wicked old woman is descending, very carefully, a staircase. All that perfumes and silk and preservatives can do for her charms has been done, which is not much. Footmen stand around, upright as chessmen on the black and white marble floor, and she comes down the stairs, their bent little old mistress. As usual, the first arrivals have preceded her, and are now kicking their heels in the anteroom. Lady Woodcourt does not hurry on their account, nor does it occur to her to acknowledge them. She moves, a slow bent little old woman, down the stairs as if she would like an arm or a stick to keep her upright. Here, in her house, she seems a nervous little bird in a brilliant gold cage; everything so baby-blue and gold, every wall so hung with looking glasses to entertain its denizen with contemplation of herself. And, between the mirrors, still more representations of Lady Woodcourt. Three or four portraits of her at her peak. In one, she is a girl in her father’s grounds. The painter, long ago, saw something in her mind, and has her holding a whip and snaffle. Another is an embarrassing and improbable portrait of her in mythological guise, as – as – as (even Lady Woodcourt, guiding her guests round, has sometimes to pause and think and dredge her old mind) Minerva, the foolish-looking owl just escaping from her limp pale fingers. The third is her wedding portrait, and unwary callers have been known to inquire of each other who the little gentleman in brown could possibly be. That useful and patient Sir Bramley is still to be seen over the fire in his wife’s London house, clinging to her arm in fear and disbelief. What happened to him in life, no one quite knows. A very young man ventured once that he had been washed, and dissolved, being nothing, in the end, but varnish and ornament. Certainly it is difficult to believe in Sir Bramley as anything more substantial than his painted past self, but the remark got back, and the very young man was seen no more at Lady Woodcourt’s. In reality, it is thought, Sir Bramley lives in Italy for the sake of his health, and leaves Lady Woodcourt to the exercise of her influence and her many protectors.

No smooth-skinned oil-fresh Minerva now, she comes forward into the room and staggers into a chair. Almost at once, the blue-coated chessman at the door gives a start and calls out the names of the first skulking guests.

‘Colonel and Miss Garraway,’ he calls, blushing and gulping like the boy he is. In through the door pop the old Colonel and his pretty daughter. He, behind some perfect translucent ruby glaze, is a hopeless and declining old beau of hers, a useful stopgap who does no harm to anyone but himself; next to him, his daughter seems alarmingly alert and clean and young. Lady Woodcourt greets them without rising, her hand resting on a bijou gewgaw, a knobbled warty Chinese bronze pig. The girl, she is pleased to see, is as pretty as everyone says, as she follows her father’s abstracted bow with a gracefully embarrassed bob, scrutinizing with intense juvenile interest the finer details of the Aubusson, murmuring something which might have been ‘My lady’. A great improvement, all in all, on the Colonel’s late wife, who came into a room and waited for the company to rise and say how-de-do, as if she deserved nothing less. This girl, at least, would not laugh in your face and call you her dear Fanny.

Bella Garraway comes into the room, and her feet in their thin slippers are glad not to be kept waiting on marble any longer. It is her first time at the famous, the fascinating Lady Woodcourt’s; her papa has taken care not to alarm her, but all the same, she is wearing what diamonds Mama’s case has yielded up. Lady Woodcourt sits, smiling vaguely; a woman shrivelled and brown as an old apple, her filmy old eyes drifting perpetually away from the mark. Bella advances, and submits to Lady Woodcourt’s grip, a fierce clutch like the clasp of a purse. She just drinks her in; her thin body, her brown wrinkled flesh drifting loosely within the hard carapace of her boned gown like a boat at its moorings. Bella has no idea, in reality, who Fanny Woodcourt is. But Bella, as her sister and governesses always privately remark, is quick on the uptake, and her eyes run quickly over the room, assessing each gift, each bibelot with the commercial eye of an auctioneer. Each object, indeed, has its magnificent provenance, since Lady Woodcourt buys nothing for herself, and takes only from the grandest of her admirers. Anything Bella’s father ever gave her is surely in Lady Woodcourt’s dressing room by now, if not passed on to the housekeeper. Bella drops her eyes in modesty, but if she will not meet Lady Woodcourt’s gaze, she is at least curious enough to inspect her voluble possessions. Whether each porcelain treasure, each glittering glass is the gift of his Grace, Excellency, Majesty hardly matters. Bella looks around, assessing, and sees what Fanny Woodcourt has been.

‘My daughter, Lady Woodcourt,’ Colonel Garraway says, with all his opium-glazed gravity. Lady Woodcourt nods, so calmly that Bella unkindly wonders whether she, too, has been drinking from the phial of the ruby witch. She has learnt how to be suspicious of anything as innocent as composure or boredom in anyone much over the age of forty-five. They all do it, she suspects; and none of them discusses it in her hearing, ever.

‘I’m afraid you will find us all,’ Lady Woodcourt says, ‘a very dull old company tonight. Do sit down. I am quite mortified, my dear, to inflict such a, such a bundle of dry old sticks on you. I positively fear you may never come again, and that, that, that—’

‘That would never do,’ Colonel Garraway supplies gallantly, handing his daughter to a settle, and sitting down after her. Lady Woodcourt laughs brilliantly, a sound as if her glassy old bones have tumbled loose, all at once, and chimed together into a heap, somewhere inside her skin.

‘I’m sure it will be delightful,’ Bella says, inadequately.

‘Such a lot of dry old sticks,’ Lady Woodcourt says, with a touch of steel, not liking to be contradicted even in this mock-apology. She seems to believe her own polite disclaimer for a second, believing what she says as she says it, as all liars must, and a cloud passes over her brow. ‘Still – that wonderful young man – the explorer, who, who, who—’

‘The hero of Bokhara,’ Colonel Garraway adds, smiling. ‘Yes, that very wonderful young man.’

‘Bokhara,’ Lady Woodcourt sighs, relieved. ‘Now that is a place, I swear, not one person in a thousand had heard a jot or, or, or tittle of one year ago. And now we talk of it as readily as we talk of, of—’

‘Dorsetshire,’ Colonel Garraway says.

‘Of Dorsetshire,’ Lady Woodcourt continues. ‘My young friends talk of nothing else. I think one or two, they fancy taking a house in the better quarter of Bokhara for the winter. Now what do you think of that?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ Bella says, faintly alarmed as Lady Woodcourt spectacularly tinkles away.

‘All stuff and nonsense, of course, and I don’t believe any one of them could point to the wretched place on the map. Still, we talk of nothing else, I find, and all down to this singular, ah, fascinating, ah, ah, remarkable young man, all—’

‘Captain Burnes,’ Bella interjects.

‘Indeed. Thank you, my dear,’ Lady Woodcourt says, looking genuinely as if no one has ever done her a greater favour. ‘And now, who is this—’

‘M. le Duc de Neaud,’ the footman calls, or rather attempts, since what he announces is the Duck de Nod. ‘And,’ as a little woman in a snuff-coloured dress scurries in after her diminutive husband, ‘Mme la Duchesse.’

Everyone rises with an audible relief.

‘Delighted – charmed – delighted – quite on time – feared to be early – my dear Fanny – my dear—’ the Duchesse de Neaud spills over. She is English, a chatterbox, resented by no one, welcome everywhere, if she does not come first or leave last. The Duc limits himself to a quick bow and a scowl. He came over after the Revolution and, penniless, married one of those spinsters who attended the old Queen Charlotte, to everyone’s surprise, including hers; her future had seemed to be mapped out in the series of faintly dictatorial books for children she wrote in dull afternoons at Windsor. She turns from Lady Woodcourt to Bella. ‘My dear – my dear—’

Colonel Garraway snaps into awareness. ‘Duchesse,’ he says. ‘My daughter, Bella.’

‘Miss Garraway,’ the Duc says. ‘Charmé.’ But he is already turning, already charmed, it seems, with the next entrants, and Bella sees no reason not to sink back into her chair as the room starts to fill.