Life Mask

  Greatly relieved, Anne ploughed on. 'I'm most dreadfully sorry—that we missed your birthday, I mean. We'll make a great fuss of you next year, for your eightieth. Perhaps a party!'

  'I'm afraid I can't promise to attend,' said Walpole drily.

  She caught his eye and started laughing; she couldn't help it. Oh, please God, let him not demand that I explain what's so funny about the prospect of his death! That made her laugh all the harder.

  A creaking sound, like a gate in a high wind. To her enormous relief, Walpole had joined in. When he stopped laughing he said, 'William Beckford is back in England.'

  'Oh, yes?' Anne was startled by the change of tone.

  'He wanted a diplomatic mission, of all things, but Loughborough and Portland have blocked him.'

  Lord Loughborough was the boy's uncle, Anne remembered, the boy who'd grown up to be Viscount 'Kitty' Courteney.

  'Once an exile, always an exile. The verdict of society went against Beckford back in '84 and against that sentence there is no appeal,' said Walpole.

  Was he trying to tell her something?

  'He means to build an abbey at Fonthill, out-Gothicise Strawberry Hill,' said Walpole disdainfully. 'I hear he calls this place a little mousetrap.'

  'The cheek of him!'

  'He's told his agents to stay poised to buy up all my best antiquities at auction the moment I'm dead.' A heavy pause. 'I shall have to live to be ninety at least, to thwart him.'

  'I hope so,' said Anne, her throat sore.

  IT WAS A COLD November night in Grosvenor Square; Anne and Mary lay knotted up in each other's arms under heavy blankets. They rarely had this opportunity; only when Mary's family could spare her. It still felt strange to Anne. They weren't in Bognor any more, cut off from the World in their private bubble; they were in her house, with her mother sleeping two rooms away. Anne had been afraid that perhaps once they were in London everything would go back to the way it had been before—but no. She hadn't lost Mary, this new, wild Mary; nothing had been lost. She smiled in the darkness.

  'What did you mean,' came a whisper, 'when you said you knew no more than I did?'

  'When?'

  'At the start,' said Mary, betraying a little awkwardness.

  'Ah,' said Anne, remembering that night in Bognor after their sea bathe. 'I thought you wanted never to speak of it,' she added teasingly.

  A thoughtful silence. 'I'm ready now. So what did you mean?'

  'When I said I knew no more than you? Just that.'

  'But Anne—that can't be so.'

  'Why can't it?' asked Anne in her ear.

  'Because you've always—it's been quite clear to me that you ... knew what to do,' said Mary.

  Anne laughed shyly. 'No more than you.'

  'But didn't you—hadn't you already'—Mary was a little gruff now—'oh, don't make me spell it out!'

  'My love,' said Anne, a phrase that made her shake now, though she used to say it without thinking before Bognor.

  'I think ... I was not the first,' said Mary rather formally.

  'Indeed you are.'

  Mary's head twisted towards her. 'But—'

  Anne cut in before Mary could form the syllables of Miss Farren. She didn't want that name spoken in this bed. 'Those I desired, without knowing it—I can say that now, as I never could before,' she added with difficulty,'—they didn't desire me. Or, perhaps they may have,' she said, thinking of that extraordinary scene in which the actress had forced a defiant kiss on her, 'but not enough to risk admitting it. I can't be sure.'

  After a long pause Mary said, 'I think that was my own situation. So you're telling me that even before—'

  'The person in question,' said Anne stiffly.

  'Yes, before that, there was nothing?'

  'A kiss, once, in Italy,' she added, scrupulous, 'that was all.'

  'Then when you told me those rumours were pure invention—'

  'I was speaking the literal truth, yes,' said Anne, a little irked. 'Didn't you believe me?'

  'I thought I did,' said Mary, 'but now it seems that in some dark little corner of my heart I didn't.'

  'You thought me an accomplished Sapphist, in fact.' Anne threw the word into the darkness.

  Mary twitched at that. 'I suppose I must have done.'

  'Why weren't you afraid of me?'

  'Oh, I was,' Mary assured her. 'And afraid of what you brought out in me. I think now that may be why I succumbed so quickly to O'Hara.'

  The name still had a strange power; Anne could almost feel the solidity of him in the room.

  'I did love him. I thought he'd save me. But then I couldn't bear to leave you behind. That should have told me something.' And Mary curled her head into the curve of Anne's shoulders.

  'You're happier now, aren't you? Happier than before, I mean.'

  'So much. Need you ask? But don't expect ever to see me perfectly happy,' said Mary, rueful, 'since by nature I'm such a prey to emotion. I worry about the future.'

  'Our future?'

  'No, no. When my father's taken from us—the fact is, Agnes and I will have no more that £350 a year apiece.'

  My God, Anne thought, I spend that much on marble. She spoke firmly. 'When that day comes I can't think you'd break my heart by refusing to share my fortune.'

  'Oh, my dearest. I wasn't asking—'

  'Mary, I would have offered years ago, but I thought it needed no saying.'

  A hush between them now, the pressing of cheek to cheek.

  There was a hammering at the front door. Anne was out of bed and into her dressing gown before she knew it. Her pulse pounded. How can anyone have guessed? she thought. What can have given us away?

  She met the sleepy-eyed maid on the landing. A note from Goodwood, madam.'

  Goodwood? Anne tore it open, puzzled. It was very short.

  I am sorry to tell you that the Duchess died at twenty-five minutes past ten. Can you come down in the morning and bring your mother?

  In haste,

  Richmond.

  When she'd read it through twice she went back to her room. 'What is it?' hissed Mary. 'Shall I light the lamp?'

  'No, no,' said Anne, climbing into the creaking bed. 'My sister's dead,' she said, and laid her head on Mary's breasts and shut her eyes tightly.

  Mary held her without saying anything for a long time, so long that Anne thought she might have fallen asleep. 'I knew she was ill,' Anne said at last into the soft cotton of Mary's nightgown. 'Yes.'

  'But no particular disease, nothing the doctors could identify. I didn't realise she was in danger.'

  'Of course you didn't,' said Mary, as if hushing a child.

  'I should have visited Goodwood more these last years.'

  'Everyone thinks that when someone dies.'

  'No, but—' Anne felt the tears swimming up through her head.

  'We were so unlike. I never cared for Lady Mary, not enough, not as a sister should.'

  Mary was honest enough not to deny that.

  One couldn't pick whom to love, thought Anne. The woman beside her was friend and sister and lover and many things besides. One could only hope to recognise love where it grew, and get a grip on it and hold on.

  JANUARY 1797

  Dear Mr Wroughton,

  I'm afraid I can't think of playing Lady Dorville in The Force of Ridicule tonight [Eliza scribbled, at her narrow secrétaire in Green Street] till I receive word that you or Mr Sheridan has given an order for Westley's payment to me of at least £400 of the Amount owing.

  Yours,

  E. Farren

  She wasn't claiming to be ill this time; the quarrel was out in the open. Richard Wroughton had turned out to be all steel, under his mild surface, and rumour had it that he'd only agreed to replace Kemble after bargaining Sheridan up to the extraordinary salary of 800 guineas a year. Guineas, like a gentleman, thought Eliza vindictively. She was nostalgic for the old days; Wroughton had none of Kemble's ambition or daring and the playbills made dull reading. B
ut the real problem was money. Eliza had been on £18 a week for many years now and hadn't pushed for an increase, even though her bills at Green Street seemed to mount all the time. Did this delicacy win her respect or special treatment? Anything but; Drury Lane now owed her the fantastical sum of £1100. Why, one could buy a house with that! It was time to do what Mrs Jordan had done long ago and stand firm.

  She sat and waited; to calm her nerves she read Miss Burney's Camilla, as everyone was this season. At half past four she got Wroughton's tetchy answer and a blunter one from Sheridan.

  Miss Farren,

  I've just come from the Commons & found your latest Note. Getting you £400 tomorrow is out of the question. If I find you £100, will you give over this nonsense?

  R. B. S.

  She made the messenger wait for her brief response.

  Finding you don't take my claim seriously, I am obliged to put

  the matter in the capable hands of Shawe, my lawyer.

  'I saw Gillray's latest cartoon in a window today,' Mrs Farren mentioned, looking up from her knotting. 'It shows your dear Fox as a revolutionary in shirtsleeves, firing a pistol at a target marked Crown, Lords and Commons.'

  'Well, no one pays any attention to Gillray's views any more, Mother,' said Eliza sharply, 'since he's been gagged by a pension from Pitt.'

  After dinner she sat wrapped up warm against the draughts, ploughing through her novel—but she couldn't concentrate: her eyes went back to the top of the page. Would they have pulled The Force of Ridicule already and given out an old play? Or would Wroughton be counting on her to turn up ten minutes before the curtain rose? She'd only done this—missed a performance—a handful of times in her whole career; it made her feel sick.

  The messenger knocked at the door, as she'd been expecting, at ten past six. Her mother sent him away.

  Eliza was still in her undress robe the next morning when Jack Palmer was shown up. 'Jack,' she said with startled pleasure.

  He wasn't smiling. He threw himself into a chair beside Mrs Farren. 'What do you think you're doing, Eliza?'

  She didn't know how to answer him.

  'Last night was ghastly. After the orchestra'd dragged through every tune Handel ever wrote, I had to announce that you were too ill to leave your bed and the audience could have their money back at the doors, or stay to see Siddons in The Fatal Marriage. We had to yank the poor woman out of a box at Covent Garden for that; by the time she'd driven to Drury Lane and dressed, most of the crowd had gone home.'

  'I'm sorry,' said Eliza, 'but she must understand: I'm using an actress's only weapon.'

  He snorted. 'Your situation's not unique. All our wages are in arrears.'

  'By £1100?'

  He was jolted by the figure, she could tell, but he pressed on. 'For God's sake don't act the pauperess when you're a countess-in-waiting. You know it, we all know it, the entire British public knows it. You can draw on the resources of the richest man in England.'

  Her mother had risen to her feet, mouth quivering, as if she was trying to find the nerve to order the actor out. Eliza pointed her fan at Palmer. 'I have never accepted a penny from the Earl of Derby. Not presents, not so much as a bracelet. Not that it's any of your business.'

  'All I mean is that you can't possibly fear poverty. You've never heard your brats wail because they're hungry,' growled Palmer. 'So don't pretend this is about money.'

  'It's about dignity, then.'

  'There we go. Your foolish, feminine, damnable pride.'

  'How dare you!'

  'Mr Palmer—' began her mother.

  'You're wasting the little bit of your career you have left. We expect to lose you at a day's notice,' Palmer told Eliza, 'whenever the paralytic Lady D. shrugs off her mortal coil. We're resigned to that. But in the meantime, don't muck about and pose and pout. The theatre needs you.'

  'And you need to learn some manners, late in life,' she told him. 'Barging in here—'

  'Eliza, I've known you nearly twenty years,' he said, 'and I've slapped out the flames when your dress caught fire in the middle of the Spanish Barber. What, am I to leave my card at the door like a stranger?'

  She didn't know what to say.

  'Come back with me. Let's open this comedy tonight; it could be the hit we all need.'

  'I'm sorry, Jack. Not till this is settled.'

  In the window, watching the tall, pot-bellied fellow stalk down Green Street, she felt a ridiculous urge to cry. None of them was young any more. Mrs Farren began to complain of the fellow's manners, but Eliza refused to talk about it.

  The day dragged by, with no note from Sheridan or Wroughton; it was another brutally cold one. The papers were full of stories of beasts freezing to death in the fields, mothers arid babies found stiff in ditches. The army and navy were running out of soldiers, because so many had died in the war, or through fever in the West Indies, or had been discharged unfit; all over the city, hard-faced amputees begged for pennies. The Times was urging ladies to refuse to patronise any shops (especially milliners) that employed men to do what women could; in these dark times such men were a disgrace to their sex and should go to war immediately, leaving the jobs for the many distressed females who needed them.

  Her mother was clucking over something in the paper.

  'What is it?'

  'It says here a dressmaker was looking after her poor crippled mother, a Mrs Lamb, when suddenly she upped and stabbed the old woman to death in a frenzical fit!'

  Amazing,' murmured Eliza, hiding a smile.

  In the late afternoon the messenger brought Sheridan's letter. Farren, it began brusquely,

  I think this the dirtiest trick you've ever yet played. These coercive measures are unworthy of a lady (soi-disant) and contrary to your Articles of Engagement. £150 is the very limit of my resources at the moment & you shall immediately have a draft at a short date on ourfirm for that sum. May I give out The Force of Ridicule for tonight?

  Eliza steeled herself and sent back a single line: My answer remains the same. She went to bed early.

  On the third morning, Sunday, the messenger brought a draft for £300 on Coutts the banker, signed by Westley, the treasurer. Eliza looked at it wearily. Well, she supposed it would have to do for now. Every day she stayed away from Drury Lane she felt further adrift.

  FEBRUARY 1797

  Berkeley Square was quiet, that Tuesday morning, except for the rustle of the plane trees. Derby's coachman drew up at no. n, where the street was thickly strewn with straw and the door knocker was muffled in cloth: two bad signs. 'I may be some time,' Derby said to the driver. 'Why don't you see if Miss Farren needs the carriage? If my business is finished before you come back I'll take a hackney.'

  'Very good, M'Lord.'

  Derby tapped the knocker gently. The door was opened by a footman, almost at once. When he was shown into the dark room he couldn't see a thing. 'Your Lordship, what an honour you do me,' came a creaking voice from the bed.

  'I wasn't sure you'd be up to receiving visitors, sir.'

  Walpole's valet dragged him up a little on the pillows. Derby's eyes were adjusting to the dim. 'Oh, when I'm not in pain I'm still capable of being amused,' drawled the old man, 'which is not to say that every visitor achieves it.'

  Derby laughed under his breath as he took a seat. 'I must do my best.' He had only got around to paying this visit because he'd heard at Brooks's that Walpole was on his deathbed. He wondered whether to ask after his health or not.

  'Oh, I have great hopes of you,' said the small voice. 'Most of my visitors these days are charitable elders, together with about fourscore nephews and nieces of various ages, brought along to stare at me as the Methuselah of the family.' His words came out slow and faint, but he seemed quite coherent, which was a relief to Derby. 'They never troubled themselves much about me before, but now they begin to see me in the light of a legator they grow very attentive, and send game and sweetmeats, none of which I can eat. They can speak only of their own con
temporaries, which interests me no more than if they chattered of their dolls or bats and balls.'

  'I hope I'm old enough, at least, to provide congenial conversation. Who was your last amusing visitor?' asked Derby.

  'Hm. Mr Lysons the clergyman is not very amusing in himself, but he did tell me about a Welsh sportsman who recently had his daughter christened—let me get this right—Louisa Victoria Maria Sobieski Foxhunter Moll Boycott.'

  'I congratulate you on your memory.'

  'That'll be the last faculty to go,' said Walpole, 'some days I feel like a great sack of memory. Now what can you tell me about politics?' he asked almost briskly. 'Really, these days I see nobody who knows anything.'

  'Well, the story that's flying round Brooks's this week,' Derby began, 'is of Pitt's broken engagement.'

  'Engagement?' Walpole's eyes bulged in their sallow sockets. 'Has the man not enough to do to keep this country out of the abyss, in these mad times, but he must go looking for a wife?'

  'I believe it was the other way round. Pitt's such a gloomy monk, he barely sees his friends, let alone going a-wooing. No, it was his neighbour Lord Auckland who tried to foist his eldest daughter on to our PM, but Pitt seems finally to have made his excuses and fled.' Derby was going to go further and report that Pitt was said to have blamed his withdrawal on certain insurmountable obstacles that he wasn't willing to discuss with Auckland. According to Sheridan, this was proof positive that Pitt was the molly he'd always thought him. But it occurred to Derby just in time that Walpole himself had been dogged by such rumours for most of his life.

  'Tell me, what information have you on the French fleet?' asked the old man.

  There'd been several alarming attempts at invasion. At Christmas General Hoche had tried to land 15,000 men on the southwest coast of Ireland in a high gale. 'Have you heard about Wales, sir?'

  'What about Wales?'

  'Well, I don't mean to alarm you in your present state of health—'

  'Tush,' said Walpole, waving one claw.

  '—but a legion of French convicts landed there last week.'